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COEmiGKT BEPGSHi 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



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AT GOOD OLD SIWASH 
MY DEMON MOTOR BOAT 
HOMEBURG MEMORIES 
PETEY SIMMONS AT SIWASH 
THE TWENTY-FOUR 




'' Am not fitted to enter this struggle because of my wild 
desire to bite somebody." Frontispiece. 



THE TWENTY- FOUR 

WHERE I TOOK THEM AND 
WHAT THEY DID TO ME 

BY 
GEORGE FITCH 



IN 6N>kmR T 




^1AIVAD-Q3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1917 






^^\<^^ 



Copyright, 1917, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, January, 1917 



0I9I7 



J. Paekhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



©CU455067 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I 


The Start 


I 


II 


Getting Them on Board . 


. 31 


III 


At Sea with 'Em 


. 41 


IV 


Doing Great Britain . ;, 


. . 84 


V 


On the Continent . . 


. 125 


VI 


The Finish . ., . i, 


:. 163 



The Twenty- Four 

CHAPTER I 

THE START 

ONCE I was a reporter on the livest 
newspaper in the Middle West. 
We admitted it ourselves, under 
the heading on the first page, and strove 
manfully to live up to the boast through- 
out the succeeding pages. We overlooked 
no possible news, and our business man- 
ager allowed no possible dollar to stray by 
the office uncaptured. He was, if any- 
thing, more alive than the editorial de- 
partment. To prove it, one spring he put 
on a circulation contest, by the terms of 
which he bound himself to send to Europe 
the five girls who would obtain the most 
subscriptions to the paper in three months; 

I 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



and in order to make the party more im- 
pressive he got six other newspapers in 
other cities to join with him in the noble 
work of swamping the monarchies of the 
Old World with genuine American 
beauties. 

The contest was alarmingly successful. 
In two weeks it attained a fury which 
overshadowed news, politics and religion 
in our city. A hundred girls battled day 
and night for the trip. Iheir friends 
worked even harder. Friends of their 
friends lined up in hostile camps and out- 
subscribed each other with reckless fury. 
Determined contestants raided the coun- 
try in buggies, and chased stubborn farm- 
ers up trees. They grew pale and thin 
from anxiety, fainted on doorsteps and 
had hysterics in church. 

The whole city paid up its subscription 
four or five years in advance. The fiance 
of one contestant paid up for two hundred 
years; and whenever the fervor lagged 

2 



THE START 



and human strength could do no more I 
would be commandeered by the business 
office to ginger things up. Thereupon I 
would write a new advertisement which 
painted the delights of European travel 
with such marvelous eloquence, stuffed 
such unheard-of luxuries into the steamer 
and wove such enchanting romances about 
the hotels in which the party would stop, 
that those girls would nerve themselves 
into a new and unnatural fury and totter 
out again. 

When the contest ended the business 
office had a cistern full of money, and the 
circulation manager went to bed with ice 
on his neck. As for the five who won, 
they would have had nervous collapses, 
too, but they didn't have time. They had 
three days in which to have their going- 
away clothes made, and they had to work 
harder than ever. In starting the trip so 
soon after the contest our business man- 
ager showed what I have always con- 

3 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



sidered a refinement of cruelty. It was 
like asking a race horse to pull himself 
together after passing the wire and go 
another heat without stopping. The girls 
had to stay up all night with their dress- 
makers to finish their wardrobes, but not 
one of them expired on the job. 

On the morning after the grand finale 
the publisher sent for me and thanked me 
for my work as egger-on of contestants. 
" You did a great job/' he said cordially. 
" Some of those advertisements of yours 
were almost unbelievable. They even got 
me excited. Td like to go on this trip 
myself. , But it's out of the question. I've 
got to stay and spend this money. How- 
ever, some one must take these girls to 
Europe. There will be twenty-four of 
them. It will be a very pleasant trip. 
I've consulted with the other business 
managers and they all think you've earned 

it. So you're to go with them Don't 

do that!" he shouted, shoving a chair 

4 



THE START 



under me hastily as I sat down. " It will 
be a real nice outing. Have a cigar. 
There, now you look better. You'll enjoy 
it. They are beautiful girls. Your salary 
goes right on, of course — have a glass of 
water. You're just to take them to New 
York, put them on the boat, take care of 
them going over and deliver them to the 
guide in Glasgow — here's a fan. You 
see, it's no trick at all — feel all right now? 
You've done good work on this, old man, 
and we appreciate it." 

I went upstairs firmly determined never 
to do good work for anybody again, for 
fear of the reward. Still, there was noth- 
ing to be done about it. It was an assign- 
ment and that settled it. Some reporters 
go to war, some have to jump out of 
balloons in patent parachutes, and some 
have to take parties of young and beautiful 
girls to Europe. It's all in the game. In 
the midst of life you are in trouble and all 
that. I put my desk in order, wished on 

5 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



my dearest enemy the job of working up 
the Sunday night church column, and 
when the staff presented to me, as a fare- 
well gift, a large hand mirror and eight 
dozen assorted hairpins I responded with 
simple dignity. Then I packed my trunk 
and went to Chicago to meet the expe- 
dition. 

It assembled by brigades and platoons 
the next morning. From all directions 
came exhausted but happy winners ac- 
companied by billows of baggage. Some 
of them were young and very beautiful; 
some were older and moderately beautiful; 
still others were middle-aged young ladies, 
and one of them, a motherly soul, told me 
that her granddaughter was the prettiest 
child in her town. There came also friends 
and relatives, publishers and circulation 
managers, railroad and steamship repre- 
sentatives, tourist agents, emissaries of 
the local press, and many of the populace 
— a mighty throng. 

6 



THE START 



As commander of the company I got a 
great deal of attention. Prosperous 
newspaper owners got fraternal with me 
and gave me cigars. Agents made up to 
me. Reporters interviewed me and com- 
mented upon my bravery. Friends of the 
travelers brought me gifts and commis- 
sions. I was photographed at the head 
of the flock. Peary starting for the North 
Pole could not have caused more commo- 
tion than I caused just then. It was all 
very inspiring, especially at the train, 
where the whole company exploded into 
farewell scrimmages. The confusion was 
tremendous. I was the only calm person 
there. 

Responsibility stiffened me wonderfully. 
I shall never forget the feeling of perfect 
confidence with which I counted the 
trunks and suitcases, audited the hand 
parcels and umbrellas, tipped the porters, 
reassured the publishers, cheered up the 
friends, and finally unwound my twenty- 

7 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



four charges from their relatives and 
checked them off as they went aboard. 

There is in some men a latent genius 
which makes generals. I felt it bubbling 
within me and I was proud. Not bump- 
tious and arrogant, but quietly, confidently 
proud. The girls themselves noticed that 
confidence and it heartened them up a lot. 
Some of them told me afterward that my 
demeanor of cool experience was the only 
thing that prevented them from^ backing 
out at that last fearful moment. 

There was a hurricane of farewells as 
the time of departure came and I took 
leave of the seven publishers, each lit up 
with the joy and hospitable feeling of 
doing things well. " My boy," said the 
fattest of them, giving me a parting cigar, 
" we want these girls to have the grandest 
time in the world. Nothing is too good 
for them. Remember, deny them noth- 
ing. Keep them happy. Don't let them 
have a worry. Show them one great time 

8 



THE START 



in New York. Surround them with lux- 
uries and comforts. Remember we de- 
pend on you. WeVe given you three 
hundred dollars to spend getting them on 
the steamer. What you have left you can 
spend on 'em in Europe. Make the trip 
a paradise for them. They've earned it, 
every one of 'em." 

The relatives of the girls had a parting 
interview with me too. They were im- 
pressionable people and Europe seemed a 
long way off to them. They were polite 
about it, but their spokesman, an Iowa 
farmer with large, hairy wrists, led me to 
understand that if even one of those girls 
fell overboard or got mislaid or was dam- 
aged in transit or was not delivered at 
home by me, said relatives would mangle 
me with consequences. I did not blame 
them. They were nervous. I have no 
doubt that I could have come Home one or 
two short and they would have over- 
looked it when they were calmer. But I 

9 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



promised them that I would account for 
every one. And then the engine tooted 
and we went away. 

Then I went into the smoking room and 
smoked a meditative cigar. I was alone 
in the world with twenty-four — ^twenty- 
four, count 'em — beautiful American girls, 
varying in ages from eighteen to sixty- 
two. I had twenty-five round-trip tickets 
to New York in one pocket. In another I 
had twenty-five steamer tickets. A huge 
mass, which stretched a third pocket all 
out of shape, was made up of twenty-five 
coupon railway, hotel and excursion 
tickets over Europe. In a fourth pocket 
was a roll of bills which felt like an 
elephant's hind leg and which acted like 
a snowball. A fifth pocket held a peck of 
change for instant use in emergencies. In 
a sixth were twenty-four trunk checks. 
There were also twenty-three suitcases, 
four boxes, nineteen umbrellas and eight 
bundles to be kept track of, but I did not 

lO 



THE START 



wear these on my person. They were 
piled up in the cars. 

I arranged my property so that it would 
not bulge too inartistically and then 
strolled forward to begin conducting. 
The girls greeted me with joyful smiles 
and expressed their admiration for the 
executive ability of man in a way which I 
could not but take as personal. I gave a 
pleasant word to each and issued a few 
directions to the porter in tones which 
indicated plainly that porters were noth- 
ing to me. Then, quite casually, I began 
to answer questions. 

Funny how little I thought about it at 
the time. One often begins a tremendous 
life's work that way. A couple of girls 
wanted to know some things regarding 
our route to New York. I answered with 
that air of infallibility which leads many 
a woman to look up information in the 
encyclopedia and then corroborate it by 
asking her husband. As the facts flowed 

II 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



forth young women in all parts of the car 
laid down their books and crowded about 
to ask a few questions too. I answered 
them all: 

" Yes, ma'am, this train gets to New 
York at 5 P. M. tomorrow.'' "Yes, we 
shall have to transfer to the steamer." 
" Oh, no. The steamer will not wait for 
us. It will sail at noon sharp. But we 
shall have plenty of time." " Yes, we 
should lose the trip if we missed it. But 
don't worry, we'll not miss it." " No, this 
line has never had an accident." **' Yes, 
we stop at Cleveland for a few minutes. 
You can get out and walk up and down 
the platform." '^ We get into New York 
at five o'clock." '' Yes, this sleeper goes 
straight through." " No, they'll not side- 
track us at Buffalo by mistake." "We 
shall have lunch in half an hour now." 
" Oh, no, you do not pay for the lunch. 
I pay all bills." " We get in New York 
at five o'clock tomorrow." " Oh, yes, I 

12 



THE START 



can get into the baggage car and open 
your trunk — the blue hat you say? " 

" Yes, all the trunks are on board." 
" Yes, I can send a telegram for you from 
any station/' " No, we shall not have 
time to stop over at Niagara Falls.'' " I'm 
afraid you will not have time to see your 
cousin in Schenectady, but we'll try." 
" We get into New York about five o'clock 
tomorrow afternoon. May be a little 
late." " The left side will be next to the 
river when we go down the Hudson." 
" We get into Buffalo at midnight." 
" Yes, tonight." " We get into New York 
tomorrow afternoon." '^ The steamer 
sails tomorrow morning — I mean the next 
noon." " Don't worry, I'll find your suit- 
case key. You've just dropped it." 
^^ Yes, you should have brought a cloak 
for use on the steamer. They say the dew 
is heavy at nights." " They are playing 
' The Three Twins ' in New York, and you 
can go if you wish." " The train gets 

13 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



into New York at 7:43 tomorrow eve- 
ning/' "There are eighteen cars on the 
train." " Yes, I think I can get you 
transferred to the last car/' 

" The name of the steamer is Cam- 
bodiaJ' " Yes, she has propellers/' " Oh, 
yes, a steamer with three smokestacks is 
much safer than a steamer with only one. 
We haven't skimped on smokestacks." 
" The population of Buffalo is two 
milHons." '' The Falls are just back of 
the Union Depot in Cleveland — I mean 
Buffalo." "'We get into New York at 
noon day after tomorrow/' " This train 
makes eighty miles an hour." '' No, there 
has never been a wreck on this road." 
" Yes, there will be life preservers for 
every one on the boat." " It is the Cam- 
memberL It has eighteen captains and 
forty-five propellers." " We get into 
New York in time for dinner this eve- 
ning." " Yes, Niagara Falls are on the 
Hudson. You can see them after the 

14 



THE START 



steamer starts." " Yes, I will wire for 
your pocketbook." " No, we only stop a 
few minutes in Washington." "We get 
into Boston at five o'clock tomorrow 
afternoon." 

By the end of an hour I was talking 
thickly and had located the Grand Banks 
in Wall Street. But not one of the young 
ladies cared. They were only asking 
questions for amusement anyway. It was 
their favorite game all through the trip. 
At first it worried me because I was too 
conscientious. But later I saved my 
strength and brain, and didn't put all the 
intellectual fire of my being into each 
answer as I did in the above. I should 
have got along beautifully if it hadn't been 
for a grim and businesslike young school- 
teacher from Iowa. She remembered my 
answers and looked them up. It was an 
unfriendly trick. All through the trip 
she came to me with answers of mine 
which I had happily emitted, and after I 

IS 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



had repeated the information she would 
quote from some fool authority or other 
before the whole crowd. If I hadn't been 
a man and she a woman the rest of the 
party would have lost confidence in me. 

We had dinner by ourselves and I 
thoroughly enjoyed myself as host. It 
was most pleasant beaming hospitably 
upon the hungry crowd and smiling be- 
nevolently as girl after girl slipped up to 
me and asked if roast turkey or peach 
Melba or asparagus salad would be too 
expensive. Never have I felt more like a 
millionaire than during that meal, as I 
urged all present to eat a lot and then 
make room for dessert. The bill was as 
large as two of my weekly pay checks, but 
I paid it with a carelessness which caused 
the waiters to address me as ^' General '' 
for the rest of the trip. 

I had intended to spend the afternoon 
pointing out the sights, but circumstances 
prevented this. It became necessary to 

i6 



THE START 



suspend the information-bureau work and 
open up the diplomatic service. Of course, 
every one was perfectly happy and had the 
friendliest feelings, but nevertheless there 
were details which had to be arbitrated, so 
to speak. There was the matter of seats. 
It seems that eighteen girls had been 
promised seats facing forward on the Hud- 
son River side. This was awkward be- 
cause there were only six such seats. I 
asked the porter if he could bring in more, 
and he only parted his Ethiopian features 
until he looked like a cavern studded with 
tombstones, and laughed at me. I tried 
to explain the difficulty away. No use. 
Every one was polite but quite firm. I 
finally remembered that from the shore 
side Mr. Rockefeller could be seen play- 
ing golf on week days and that at the last 
wreck only those sitting on the river side 
had been drowned. This rather overdid 
matters and there was such' a rush to star- 
board that I had to plead with several 

17 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



girls to be brave and risk their lives with 
me on the river side. 

No sooner was this settled than a graver 
situation broke out. For purposes of 
economy the girls had been assigned two 
to a stateroom by the steamer agent, who 
paired off such names as looked congenial 
and were of about the same length and 
consistency. This was all right until 
about 4 P. M., when somewhat more than 
half the girls came to me in states varying 
from tears to icy anger and explained that 
they couldn't possibly room with the girls 
assigned them. Each had been looking 
her roommate over and, of course, she was 
all right and perfectly nice, but 

" But '' used in this connection by a 
woman is a little word which can be 
translated into a three-thousand-word in- 
dictment. I spent a feverish hour trying 
to remove a few of those " buts." I tried 
diplomacy, humor and logic. Then I tried 
sternness. But as I was explaining to 

i8 



THE START 

half a dozen young ladies that it would be 
psychologically impossible for them to 
pick soul companions at random I became 
aware of an iridescent and weirdly beau- 
tiful look in their eyes. At first I took it 
for the gleam of understanding. Then 
the look became filmy and damp and the 
horrible truth burst upon me. Those 
young ladies were going to cry ! 

Just as I was estimating the speed of 
the train and edging toward the car vesti- 
bule a flash of evil genius came. Why not 
promise to settle all this on board the 
steamer? It would be a promissory note 
with no chance of payment, but I could 
lock myself in my stateroom and let the 
billows roll over the purser. It was such 
a brilliant idea that I didn't jump off the 
train, as I should have done, but cleared 
my throat and made an announcement. 

" Very well,'' said I, " we aim to produce 
perfect happiness on this trip. When we 
reach the steamer every young lady will 

19 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



be assigned the roommate whom she most 
desires/' 

Bless their hearts ! They were reason- 
able girls. In less than two seconds the 
whole car was delighted again. I was 
immensely popular. One and all declared 
that I was an ideal conductor. It was 
here that I formed the habit of making 
promises — that foolish method of staving 
off trouble which ruins so many men. By 
night I had promised incredible things. 
I have never since then blamed politicians 
for making campaign promises. They 
are a wonderful sedative. As the promises 
fell due I liquidated them by more glitter- 
ing promises at some future date, thus 
staving off trouble like a giddy financier. 
It worked wonderfully for me, but not for 
the conductor on the other side. 

That night I slept very badly, losing my 
tourist coupons somewhere between New- 
foundland and 4 A. M., and awakening 
once in a cold sweat, believing that I had 

20 



THE START 



given the porter twenty-five steamer 
tickets for a tip and should have to make 
the rest of the journey on $1.75. But 
morning came at last and with it peace 
and happiness. The girls were radiant. 
We sped across New York State exuding 
happiness in a wide layer on each side of 
the right of way. I answered questions 
with more and more skill, and the precious 
art of promising took away all difficulties. 
At meals I sat like a benevolent father 
beaming upon the hungry company. But 
within I was gnawed by a secret fore- 
boding which no promises could dispel. 
I was spending altogether too much 
money. 

Confound it! I should have realized 
that the day before. Why had I insisted 
on stuffing those girls with delicacies? 
Three hundred dollars had looked like a 
national bank to me. I had never had 
three hundred dollars in my vest pocket 
before. It had seemed impossible for 

21 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



any one of my limited skill to get rid of it. 
Even when I paid $44 for lunch on the first 
day and $53.40 for dinner that night, I was 
not worried. But when I shelled out $25 
for breakfast and $53.20 for lunch on the 
second day and realized that I had $94.40 
left to support the party for a full day, 
amuse it and haul it and the baggage to 
the steamer^ I became intensely thought- 
ful. 

All the way down the glorious Hudson 
I made figures and added sums, and each 
total was more hideous than the last. 
How to give twenty-four girls the time of 
their lives for eighteen hours in New 
York on $94.40 was my job. Once again 
I decided to jump off and walk home. 
But we were nearing the city and at that 
minute a baggage-transfer man came in 
and took away $11.40 of my $94.40 for 
hauling our trunks to the steamer. The 
pain of this operation distracted my atten- 
tion until it was too late. The train had 

2Z 



THE START 



stopped. We were in New York and I 
had no more time to think. 

Very gradually our party was extracted 
from the Pullman. I stayed until the last, 
like the captain leaving his ship, but for 
another reason. There was a painful duty 
to be performed. I had to tip the porter. 
The tip would hurt me worse than it did 
him. Heaven knows he had earned ten 
dollars and I wanted to give it to him. 
But there were mouths to feed and I had 
to be firm. Only I didn't want any one to 
look on. When the party had all got out I 
called the porter to me and made quite a 
long speech, at the close of which I slipped 
a sealed envelope containing a dollar bill 
into his hand and leaped hastily from the 
train. I blush to this day when I imagine 
what that porter thinks of me. 

But now we were in the seething me- 
tropolis and my real duties began. I was 
the only one of the party who had seen 
New York before. A number of the girls 

23 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



had never left their home States — two had 
not been outside their counties. One and 
all they put their trust in me. They did 
it to an embarrassing extent. As I walked 
here and there, sending telegrams, super- 
vising the dispatch of the baggage, and 
talking with officials, I wore those twenty- 
four girls in a tightly fastened train behind 
me. We were universally observed and 
commented upon. If the head of the 
parade had been brighter we should have 
looked like Halley's comet. 

Seven hundred taxicabs were chugging 
away outside the station, and, as the girls 
looked longingly at them, I decided upon 
a bold financial stroke. I should lead my 
little flock across to Broadway on foot and 
we should go up to the Uproaria Hotel on 
the surface cars. Thus we would see the 
heart of the great throbbing city and 
plunge into its life at the very start. The 
hotel had taken care of our hand baggage, 
so we paraded, free-handed and wide-eyed, 

24 



THE START 



up Forty-second Street, viewed by admir- 
ing throngs who seemed particularly to 
admire the energy I displayed in detach- 
ing stragglers from the various display 
windows and herding them into line. 
Eventually I got the whole party on one 
car and a little later landed at the hotel. 
It was a great triumph from two stand- 
points. I didn't lose a girl, and I saved 
from $34 to $234 in taxicab fares, depend- 
ing upon the fierceness and rapacity of the 
chauffeurs who might have captured us. 

The Uproaria is a vast, precipitous cliff 
on Upper Broadway, which houses million- 
aires in the winter and which does a little 
transient business when they have fled in 
the summer. My paper had an account 
with the hotel and I didn't have to pay 
the room bills with the fragments of my 
$72.30, which was some comfort. The 
girls were assigned palatial suites, and 
when the last one had been hoisted aloft I 
hurried downtown to do a few errands. 

25 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



I had to buy a steamer rug and a thick 
coat — the latter by guesswork — cash a few 
personal checks in a suspicious town, buy 
several specified remedies for seasickness, 
and visit the dock to count the trunks. 

It was almost six o'clock by the time I 
began the latter task and for the next half 
hour I hunted trunks up one side of the 
pier and down the other, as a shepherd 
hunts his flock after a blizzard. I found 
seventeen at last and checked them off. 
Last of all I found my own trunk, and as 
I did so a wave of relief swept over me. 
What if I had to start across the damp 
Atlantic on a three months' trip without 
that trunk? Just after that wave of relief 
another wave overwhelmed me. What if 
the seven owners of the missing trunks 
had to do this thing? And what would 
happen to me if they did? The porters 
told me the other trunks were probably 
in the hold. I tried to hope so. 

When I reached the hotel it was seven 

26 



THE START 



o'clock. Two dozen girls, dressed in their 
very best, sat waiting for me. It was late, 
they were hungry, and I had $59-75, a lot 
of which I should need the next morning. 
How could I guard that $58.24 — for at 
that moment some more of it escaped — 
through the meal? 

The inspiration came. " Girls," I said 
with the greatest earnestness, " we are 
about to embark on the stormy Atlantic 
Ocean, which frequently turns vessels over 
and over and produces that most terrible 
of maladies, seasickness. I wish I could 
urge you once more to eat everything on 
the bill of fare, but it would not be fair to 
you. Go lightly. Eat sparingly. Toast 
and tea for the two meals preceding 
embarkation is an excellent thing. Those 
who can fast entirely will probably be 
saved. Those who can't should do their 
best. Nibble a few crackers. Take a 
plate of soup. A little ice cream might 
not be fatal — but eat nothing more. If 

27 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



you could but foresee the horrors of to- 
morrow afternoon when — — " 

At this point three girls got up hastily 
and went to their rooms, declaring that 
they could not eat a bite. Six dollars 
saved. Many of the others became notice- 
ably pale and went in to dinner reluc- 
tantly. We ate in a magnificent, gold- 
splashed cavern of a dining room, waited 
upon by our betters, and consulted a bill 
of fare whose prices sent the pangs of 
bankruptcy through me; but our total bill 
was only $17.50. I may die a poor and 
unsuccessful man, but I shall never cease 
to be proud of that stroke of finance. 

It was close to nine o'clock before the 
last diner joined us in the parlor. Mean- 
while I was in trouble beside which all the 
other complications were mere pleasant- 
ries. May paradise forever elude those 
business managers. , They, too, had fallen 
into the habit of promising things for the 
next man to fulfill. First timidly, then 

28 



THE START 



anxiously, and finally accusingly, those 
girls told me of the program for the eve- 
ning in New York, as arranged by their 
several benefactors in the various news- 
paper offices. Eight of them were to be 
taken to a roof garden. Four were to 
spend the evening with relatives in Brook- 
lyn, New Rochelle and elsewhere. Five 
were to be taken to Coney Island. Several 
were to be given automobile rides about 
the city. 

And in each case the amiable conductor 
was to carry out the plans and supervise 
them personally without a penny's cost to 
the girls. Besides, I had made a few reck- 
less promises myself. It was late. I 
was being reminded of this in no uncertain 
terms. There was I, a financial wreck 
and capable of being in only one place at 
a time — and there were twenty-four eager 
travelers, wild with desire to see New 
York for the first and perhaps the last 
time. Something had to be done instantly. 

29 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



I cleared my throat and began. " Girls," 
said I, " this is the off season in New 
York. The time to see the city is on our 
return, when you will be given an entire 
day here, with no expense spared, free of 
all charge, without money and without 

price " 

The girls had been looking at me with 
growing dislike and determination. They 
were American girls, tied by no timidities 
and by no foolish conventions. They had 
been in New York five hours and it had 
no more terrors for them. I stopped 
right there ; not because I had no more to 
say, but because there was no one to say 
it to. I was alone— alone in New York, 
with twenty-four sets of parents and 
relatives, some very good shots among 
them, fondly trusting in me, back in the 
West. The girls had gone out to see New 
York. 



30 



CHAPTER II 

GETTING THEM ON BOARD 

I SPENT the evening sitting by the 
ladies' entrance of the hotel, passenger 
list in hand, ready to check off the 
survivors. At eleven, five girls had re- 
turned, safe and wildly happy. They had 
done the Great White Way on foot. By 
twelve all but five had returned, full of en- 
thusiasm and good humor. They had 
been to roof gardens, theaters and on 
street-car rides. At three o'clock a large 
automobile arrived, and I gulped down a 
whole township of relief as I checked off 
the five young ladies who descended. 
They had had a good time too. They had 
been to Coney Island by auto and the 
thing had broken down on the way back. 
I telephoned the police station to discon- 

31 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



tinue the search and tossed myself thank- 
fully into bed. 

I dressed early the next morning, nerved 
for the great struggle. I had to load 
twenty-four girls, twenty-four trunks, 
forty-five suitcases and eighty-seven 
bundles into a medium-sized steamer by 
noon. I decided to hurry through break- 
fast and get the girls on board the steamer 
by ten o'clock. That would give two 
hours' margin for trouble. I had them all 
called at eight o'clock. 

Since then I have married and have be- 
come more accustomed to the ways of 
women. My great mistake was in not 
calling the party at 5 A. M. By ten only 
seventeen were down, and as I finished 
calling the other seven by telephone and 
telling them that the steamer had changed 
its time to 11 A. M., six of the seventeen 
finished their breakfasts and disappeared. 
When I got the seven into the dining room 
I went hastily out and found an empty 

32 



GETTING THEM ON BOARD 

wilderness presided over by the hotel 
clerk. Not one of the remaining eleven 
was in sight. They had all wandered off 
with a sublime faith in my ability to find 
them and get them back in plenty of time. 

That clerk was a good fellow and wise 
beyond his years. As I was about to have 
a general fire alarm sent in he stopped me. 
" They're getting souvenir cards/' he said. 
" They always do. Look in the card 
shops and writing rooms." 

It was a brilliant idea. In twenty 
minutes I had explored every shop within 
three blocks and had found most of the 
girls. In getting them back a few escaped, 
but at 10:30 o'clock I had what appeared 
to my blurred vision to be the full strength 
of the company lined up in front of their 
baggage and guarded carefully on either 
side by the clerk and the manager. With 
a trembling hand I counted them off. I 
was two short. 

The clerk guarded the corral while I 

33 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



ran hastily around the hotel five times and 
down Broadway for several blocks look- 
ing for two women whom I did not know 
by sight. As I came back empty-handed 
and full of dread, seven girls burst into 
awful sobs. They were the seven whom 
I had got downstairs by telling them the 
steamer sailed at eleven. They had 
watched the clock until eleven and had 
then collapsed. It took several minutes 
to comfort them and convince them that 
among liars I was in a grandly lonesome 
and magnificent class by myself. But 
when they were convinced they took to 
the idea thoroughly. I never was able to 
shake their belief in it afterward. 

By this time it was ii :i5. The steamer 
was miles away. There was but one thing 
to be done — ^send those girls to the steamer 
and remain behind to hunt the other two 
until the last available minute. Counting 
over my remaining $16.37 I decided to 
send them by street car. Picking out the 

34 



GETTING THEM ON BOARD 

oldest and most reliable of the flock, I 
wrote directions hastily and thrust them 
into her hand. With the aid of the ever- 
accommodating clerk we stuffed the 
twenty-two girls, seventy-two suitcases 
and four hundred and eighty-six bundles 
into a Broadway car, and, giving the con- 
ductor a dollar, I pleaded with him as a 
gentleman and an American citizen to let 
those girls off at Twenty-third Street and 
put them on a cross-town car. 

I went back and searched that hotel with 
microscopic care. I even looked hungrily 
at passing women, wishing I dared to kid- 
nap a couple of them and take them along 
to Europe to make up the full set. The 
whole hotel staff assisted me. I thought 
at first it was from kind-heartedness. 
Later I suspected that they had a fasci- 
nated interest in my gyrations. It was 
with real regret that they finally shut off 
the show, forced me into a taxi and told 
the driver to beat it up a back street with- 

35 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



out regard to regulations — which he did, 
and the fate of the expedition wavered no 
less than seven times as angry policemen 
tried to head us off; for I hadn't thought 
of letting the trustworthy leader of the 
bereft flock have the transportation. 

With a final dash and skid we landed at 
the steamer dock ten minutes before sail- 
ing time. The chauffeur and I had a brief 
quarrel at the gate — it cost me $5. If I 
had had time I could have cut the price a 
lot; but what was five dollars then — even 
my last five? I dashed madly to the 
gangplank and fell into the arms of the 
ticket taker. "My party!" I gasped. 

Are they on board? " 

What party? " the man asked with an 
elaborate yawn. 

" Twenty-two young ladies," I stuttered. 
" Some of them younger than the others. 
I have their tickets. Are they on board? " 

" Nope," said the officer cheerfully; " no 
such party has arrived.^ 

36 






if 



GETTING THEM ON BOARD 

At that minute the steamer blew its 
whistle. When Gabriel trumps and the 
world caves slowly in I shall remember 
that menacing blast. 

It was all too plain. The party had be- 
come confused and had taken an East 
Twenty-third Street car. Come to think 
of it, I had probably told them to. I knew 
the way myself perfectly, but directions in 
New York are always a bore. They were 
probably jolting on to the East River. 

And up ahead a blue-shirted roustabout 
was beginning to do horribly suggestive 
things with a gangway. Already people 
were saying good-by and flocking off. 

I laid hold of a large hawser with which 
they had tied the ship to the United States, 
and defied them to move their old steamer. 
I swore by all that was holy that I 
wouldn't let go until my party arrived. 
Quite a crowd collected and they sent for 
a doctor. The steamer whistle tooted 
again and some chump rang a bell. I 

37 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



grabbed an officer and told him that if he 
moved that ship it would be over my dead 
body. I told him I would sue the com- 
pany. I told him one of the missing girls 
was English, and Great Britain would 
take the matter up. I offered to compro- 
mise. If they would find just one of those 
girls and put her on board I would give 
him the tickets and jump resignedly off 
the dock. 

Then somebody yelled: "Here they 
come ! " I walked over large numbers of 
bystanders and looked toward the gate. 
It was true. Headed by that ever-to-be- 
blessed old lady came my flock, marching 
calmly in with their one hundred and 
seventy-six suitcases and nine thousand 
four hundred and forty-four bundles. 
And as kind hands hurried us up the gang- 
way — most of said hands supporting me — 
the steamer tooted again, the capstans 
rattled and New York began to move 
majestically away. 

38 



GETTING THEM ON BOARD 

For a minute I talked ramblingly with 
the girls. They had got into a blockade, 
they said, but were not nervous because I 
had told them they would have plenty of 
time, and they trusted me — and I was 
right, too, they said cheerfully, for hadn't 
they got there? It was pleasant and 
placid standing there at the rail with 91.6 
per cent, of my charges about me — safely 
on the ship with all our three hundred 
forty-two suitcases and millions of pack- 
ages and a fair batting average of trunks. 
It was so pleasant that ten minutes later, 
when I straightened up happily and went 
up to the boat deck to look at the Singer 
Building, I hadn't even got around to feel- 
ing sorry for the two lost members. 
Several of the girls came up, too, and as 
they walked down the deck they gave a 
shriek : " Why, there are the two girls ! " 
they cried. 

There they were, in steamer chairs, with 
rugs wrapped around them, veils over 

39 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



their hats, binoculars hanging at their 
sides, and guidebooks in their hands. As 
we rushed on them they looked up brightly 
and explained that in order not to bother 
me, and also in order to get their pick of 
seats, they had slipped quietly away after 
breakfast and had come down by them- 
selves. 

I was somewhat criticized later because 
I left the party at that point and remained 
in awful silence for some hours. But I 
had to do it. Civilization is only a thin 
veneer laid not too substantially over a 
lust for blood 



40 



CHAPTER III 

AT SEA WITH 'EM 

JULY FOURTH. Left New York 
City from the foot of Twenty-third 
Street today at five minutes after high 
noon on the steamer Cambodia, eleven 
thousand tons and eleven hundred toots, 
bound for Glasgow via Moville. Captain 
Jones, First Officer Allen. Weather bright 
and hot, sea smooth, band very poor so 
far. Steamer plentifully supplied with 
lifeboats, life preservers, food, water and 
souvenir cards. We are now well on our 
way out of the harbor. 

As guide and shepherd of twenty-four 
young women, winners of newspaper 
circulation contests in the too-distant 
West, and now known to fame as " The 
Prairie Roses ", I got them on board this 

41 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



noon with ten seconds and $1,25 to spare. 
None of the girls has been to sea before. 
Neither have I. Have found that being a 
very good swimmer tends to relieve their 
nervousness. Am not a good swimmer, 
but have lied about it, and recommend 
same course to any one else. 

In the heat of the various contests the 
circulation managers made a number of 
promises to these girls. While getting 
them to New York I made some more. 
All twenty-four are to sit at the captain's 
table, next to the captain. The ship is to 
take the southerly course, to avoid ice- 
bergs. There should be plenty of whales 
in sight in mid-ocean. We are to race with 
the Mauretania and beat her if possible. 
There should be a dance on the deck each 
evening. Letters from all are to be mailed 
home from the steamer via the pilot. 
It is too late to do this on this side, because 
I forgot to mail the letters. The girls are 
to meet every one on board at once and the 

42 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



ship is to become a happy family immedi- 
ately. The girls' chairs must be on the 
sheltered side in the sunlight, close to the 
cabin door. Books, flowers and candy 
should appear delightfully at intervals, 
supplied by the thoughtful conductor. I 
have already spent the three hundred dol- 
lars given me by the newspapers, and can 
give no suggestions about carrying out 
this promise. 

The ship is a wild tangle of hired help 
rushing here and there with baggage, and 
passengers struggling villainously for 
their inalienable rights of one sort or 
another, Am not fitted to enter this 
struggle because of my great desire to bite 

somebody. Whenever I see Miss D , 

the wise lady who got up early this morn- 
ing and slipped down to the ship to get the 
best seats, leaving me to hunt for her in 
darkest New York, I feel civilization 
slipping away from me. 

Have asked the purser to cash some of 

43 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



my travelers' checks. He has told me to 
stand aside until tomorrow. Have asked 
the deck steward to set out twenty-five 
steamer chairs worth sixty-five cents 
apiece for which the company charges a 
dollar rental. He has agreed to do it for 
cash. Have asked the chief steward to 
seat the girls next to the captain. He 
has told me that three hundred other 
people are demanding the same privilege. 
Seven of the girls have asked me to find 
their trunks. Eleven others have asked 
me if I gave their letters to the pilot. I 
am going below, to remain until to- 
morrow. 

Saturday, July 5. Bright, calm and 
beautiful this morning. I feel much 
better. Took a census of Prairie Roses 
and found the entire number still on board. 
After all, there is something comforting in 
the relentless way in which the Cambodia 
is taking us to Europe. In all probability 

44 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



no blunder of mine can stop the steam- 
ship. When I thought of this I cheered 
up a good deal and took up my daily task 
of answering questions. Explained the 
movement of ocean steamships, the 
method of discovering landmarks at sea 
where there aren't any, the reason why 
breakfast cannot be served all morning, 
the process of arranging side trips in 
Europe, why all passengers can't sit in the 
same seat in the dining room, the use of 
stokers, the operation of life preservers 
and lifeboats, and numerous other myster- 
ies. I pride myself that very few persons 
could have explained these things so 
copiously with so little knowledge as I 
had. 

Decided after breakfast to have a 
friendly talk with the captain. I wanted 
to know if he is putting his whole heart 
into the job and if I can depend upon him. 
I saw him parading around his bridge 
with nothing to do, and went up in a per- 

45 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



fectly gentlemanly way. But I didn't talk 
with him. He talked with me instead. 
He said : " Don't you know that you are 
not allowed up here ? " I came right 
down to oblige him — and he didn't even 
thank me. It has changed my entire atti- 
tude. I was wilHng to cooperate and help 
any way I could before, but now I don't 
care a hang. He can run his old ship to 
suit himself. 

Decided to visit the engine room, but 
gave that up too. I couldn't find it. The 
inside of this ship seems to be as hard to 
get into as a cocoanut. So I visited the 
second cabin instead. But I came away 
because an officer asked me to go up in 
first cabin. He was politer than the cap- 
tain but just as persuasive. Went for- 
ward to the bow and a sailor asked me to 
go back upstairs. Went in to see the 
steering machinery and some mechanic or 
other said I wasn't allowed there. Tried 
to make friends with the wireless operator 

46 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



and he waved me grandly aside. So I 
went down to the barber shop, showed my 
reporter's star, and was allowed to enter 
and be shaved. Thank heaven I am 
allowed to go somewhere! 

Eight bells of a morning and all are 
perfectly well. The nautical way of say- 
ing it is " Airs well ", but I decline to en- 
courage such villainous grammar. From 
observations thus far I discover that an 
ocean steamer proceeds by two motions — 
straight ahead and with a rotary move- 
ment. The steamer supplies the forward 
motion while the passengers revolve 
rapidly around the promenade deck. 
More than eleven thousand people have 
passed my chair this morning. As we 
have only three hundred first-class passen- 
gers this works out about thirty-five 
times around the deck for each passen- 
ger. Our party is holding its own 
nobly in the go-as-you-please walk. Miss 

47 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



R , of Chicago, has the record so far, 

with eighty-nine laps to her credit. The 
girls are all happy except a poor Missouri 
girl, who was advised to lie in her room 
all the way, and is trying nobly to carry 
out instructions. Little Miss M— — is 
greatly excited because we are due to pass 
a whale at two o'clock. The second 
officer told her so. I tried to tell her that 
whales travel on a tramp schedule, but I 
find I am no authority beside the second 
officer. 

Miss O , our Chicago breeze, 

stopped to converse on her thirty-fourth 
revolution. " Wha'd you do with your- 
self yesterday? " she demanded. " We all 
missed you. You're a grand conductor! 
You acted more like an undertaker. Say, 
a ship on the first day out makes a ward 
caucus look tame. Everybody was going 
to get settled comfortably, right away, or 
die trying. Gee, how they fought! Two 
women near me almost tore one of those 

48 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



poor deck porters in two. Each one 
claimed she saw him first. Then along 
comes a woman with a wild eye and grabs 
a man standing next to me. ' Thank 
heaven, John, I've got the table seats ! ' 
she gasps. 'They're in the first sitting; 
but oh, such a time! ' He told her to rest 
and admire the view, and she almost bit 
him. ' Rest,' says she, ' when my bath 
hour isn't arranged and I can't get a 
steward to get water for the flowers ! The 
idear! ' And down she goes into the mob 
again. Say, if I had to go to Europe that 
way I'd save my money and play foot- 
ball." 

I told Miss O that I'd try to get 

deck chairs for the girls this morning. 
" Don't fret yourself," she said sweetly. 
" The flag dropped on you about five 
o'clock yesterday. We stood around until 
we got tired and then I asked this head- 
usher person if we could have chairs. He 
says : ' A dollar apiece.' ' All right,' I 

49 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



says ; ' and charge them to the thin, wild- 
looking young man who runs us/ ' I 
carn't trust nobody, mum,' says he. ' Oh, 
you carn't,' says I, just like that. * You 
never know what you can do till you try.' 
So I goes away and sends about seventeen 
girls to him one by one and then I hunts 

up Mrs. X , that stern lady of sixty, 

you remember, who knows her rights, and 
touches her off. Say, you should have 
seen that poor chap when she loosened up. 
He set up chairs for all of us, and I guess 
he'd have brought out a sofa if we'd asked 
for it. You owe him twenty-four dollars 
too." 

I think I am going to depend a good 

deal upon Miss O on this journey. 

She seems to be a young woman of re- 
source. 

Discoveries: At noon they put up the 
ship's run for the last twenty-four hours. 
We have traveled three hundred and fifty 

50 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



miles. Don't believe it. I never saw any- 
thing so deceiving as the way a steamship 
moves. From the deck it seems to be 
traveling as slowly as a grain elevator, 
and it makes less fuss than a sewing ma- 
chine. It doesn't cough, blow off steam, 
chug or roar. It has no more voice than 
a giraffe. 

Have also discovered castes on the ship, 
even in first cabin. The rooms-with-bath 
folks are in a class by themselves. They 
speak to no one. We have also seven 
famous persons on board. They speak to 
every one — they have to. Every one in- 
sists on it. Then there are two haughty, 
stylishly dressed girls who will speak to 
no one but the rooms-with-bath folks, who 
won't speak to them; and there are the 
first-voyage folks, like our crowd. We 
are very popular. Every one who has 
been over before comes and talks to us. 
Have already met a charming young 
woman from Chicago on her eighth voy- 

51 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



age, a man from Newark on his nineteenth 
crossing, a little girl of nine who comes 
over every summer, and a baby who was 
born on shipboard. All but the baby told 
me I would never enjoy another trip so 
much. 

The purser found me this afternoon. 
For a man who was so brash yesterday he 
is remarkably humble. He said it would 
delight him beyond measure to cash my 
travelers' checks. Then he asked me if I 
couldn't help him straighten out a little 
difficulty. ■ It seems that some idiot 
(wonder who it was!) told the girls that 
each one could choose her own cabin mate 
and referred them to him. Seven of the 

girls insist on rooming with Miss S , 

our red-headed beauty from Minneapolis, 

while Mrs. X serves notice that if she 

has to stay a minute longer with Miss 

L she will not be responsible for the 

consequences. I told the purser to put 
Mrs. X with the Missouri girl, who is 

52 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



meek and uncomplaining, and his grati- 
tude was almost doglike. Am not so 
afraid of pursers as I was yesterday. 
Why should I be, when I have twenty- 
four young women to protect me? 

Went down into the hold with a steward 
this afternoon and found a trunk. This 
encouraged me so much that I went on 
and found another. Presently I found all 
seven. Hurrah ! Later I discovered that 
the steward told each one of the seven 
girls that he had found the trunks by 
crawling through the propeller tunnel, and 
they are treating him as a hero ! 

Evening. Sat on deck until late, drink- 
ing in the beauty of the summer, moonlit 
sea. I feel myself healing in every nerve. 
The Prairie Roses nodded and smiled to 
me as they went past, and now and then 
stopped and reported progress. Miss 

K , the scholarly young lady from Des 

Moines, is very tired. She read her Eng- 

53 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



lish Baedeker clear through today and is 
horribly mixed up on tombs and things. 
But she has no time to review, because to- 
morrow she must begin on London. 
What with writing home and buying 
souvenir cards, she will have no time to 
post up on land and must gulp down 
Europe in the next week — dates and all. 

The Misses B— and E have 

already explored the boat from bow to 
rudder, getting fired out of everywhere 
and enjoying it thoroughly. They stopped 
tonight to tell me that the captain is a 
single man; that the first engineer's name 
is McTavish; that the view from the bow 
is very fine; that you can get lunch after 
9 P. M. by going down and asking for it; 
that the ship's barber sells perfume; and 
that there are four college boys and two 
sick babies in the steerage. 

Miss S , our beauty, has not talked 

with me. She is too busy. She spent all 
morning talking with a young man in a 

54 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



checked cap. But he lost out later, and 
the third officer has walked around the 
deck with her nineteen times. 

Sunday, July 6. It appears that the 
ship has a voice after all. The fog whistle 
wakened me this morning. It is a mourn- 
ful, lugubrious, despondent voice — as 
cheerless as the predictions of a political 
leader out of power. When I went on 
deck I found we were poking our way into 
a solid wall of white. Found poor Miss 

T looking over the rail in terror. 

Said she didn't sleep a wink last night be- 
cause of the ice rubbing against the boat. 
She is the elderly maiden lady who made 
her will before starting. Little Miss 

M was also very nervous. She is 

afraid of icebergs too. Some rascally 
steward told her that the ship sank five on 
the last trip, but that one escaped and is 
around here somewhere. 

Went down to breakfast with eager 

55 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



anticipations, but I didn't enjoy it after 
all. There were a duchess and appendage 
at our table. When I said " Good morn- 
ing," as I have been taught to, the}^ looked 
at me as if they were afraid Fd say some- 
thing more. But ' I didn't. I am no 
glutton for punishment. I hate to eat 
under the personal supervision of royalty. 
It gets me all tangled up in my forks. 
Last night I wanted to experiment with 
Gorgonzola cheese, but didn't dare pro- 
nounce it before them, so took Cheddar 
instead. 

Miss O is also having trouble with 

her meals on account of icebergs at the 
table. " Say, what do you know about 
this?" she demanded this morning. 
" Some people on this boat have got ossi- 
fied in their necks. I don't notice any 
lady President of the United States of 
America on the passenger list, do you? 
Well, then, who is this Mrs. Goshalmighty 
who sits at our table and glares at me 

56 



AT SEA WITH ^EM 



every time I open my face? Who gave 
her this boat? I don't v^ant to sit there 
any longer. I want to go v^here I can talk 
a few lines without having any one make a 
noise like a refrigerator. I says to her 
this noon: 'AH right, lady. I'll do the 
talking and you keep on having the chills 
for the table, and we'll both be satisfied.' 
I was perfectly ladylike, but she acted as if 
I had hit her. Change me somewhere 
else, please. Til say something yet — 
honest I will." 

Most people can rest on Sunday, but 
personal conductors cannot. Answered a 
great gross of questions this morning— all 
of yesterday's over again, with some new 
ones which the girls thought up last night. 
I hate to answer questions over again be- 
cause I never keep notes on the first 
answer. Miss H , the calm, business- 
like school-teacher from Western Iowa, 
has been checking me up relentlessly. 
She cannot understand how the popula- 

57 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



tion of London has decreased a million in 
twenty-four hours. I stood on my dignity 
and told her to count up for herself when 
she got there. 

Both Misses B and E are cheer- 
ful and busy as usual. Last night they 
were ejected from the second-class dance 
and this morning they got shooed out of 
the forecastle. This afternoon a weary 
officer put them out of a lifeboat. They 
had fitted up a nest in it with steamer rugs 
and were playing two-handed bridge. 
They tell me that the ship has four 
thousand tons of oatmeal in the hold; 
that the man in the white flannel suit 
with an overcoat over it is a new-laid 
millionaire from New Jersey; that you 
can smuggle things home easily by 
putting them on and wearing them; 
that the two haughty girls with the 
self-confident clothes are daughters of a 
New York millionaire or a Western 
governor, according to rumor; that the 

58 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



quiet old man who never stirs from his 
chair is Bronson, the famous author; also 
that they are trying to get an officer to let 
them go up in the crow's nest. 

Evening. The ship has its side curtains 
down and it is very comfy on deck. But 
I wish they would give the fog whistle a 
little rest. Had a conversation with a 
very nice young couple this afternoon. It 
ran about as follows: 

" Yes, it is very thick today. But that 
of course is because we are nearing the 
Banks. My name is (Whooooooooooooo 
ooooooooooo) from Illinois. Am going 
over for the summer. Alone? Not en- 
tirely. Yes, there are lots of nice people 
on board. See that man with the checked 
cap? He's (Whooooooooooooooo). The 
great actor? Yes. It's he. I loaned him 
a match this morning. He's very affable. 
Thanked me for the match. You're from 
Boston, you say? I have a third cousin 

59 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



in Boston. His name is (Whoooooooooo 
oooooooooooo). Sorry you don't know 
him. I've never met him myself. He's 
(Whoooooooooooooooo)." 

I gave it up there. The whistle was too 
sociable. 

Discoveries Made This Day: (i) In 
foggy weather a steamer 550 feet long, 
with deck room enough for a golf course, 
is cramped and small. (2) You can't get 
anything from the help by being meek. 
Tried being arrogant with a deck steward 
today and he brought me up a special 
lunch after passing me coldly by with the 
morning beef tea. (3) Coffee with con- 
densed cream in it may be good for polish- 
ing silver, but nothing else. (4) The 

way to get along with Miss D , who 

has read up on everything, is to give her 
work to do. She had an idea that if we 
would run our fog whistle half the time, 
and let any other ship that was near 

60 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



whistle the other half, the passengers 
would get some relief. I told her to 
suggest it to the captain, and she is on 
deck, below the bridge, waiting for him. 

Monday, July 7. Every time the fog 
whistle blew this morning it unhinged one 
of my vertebrae just below my collar 
button. I do not know how terrible a 
collision is, but I am resigned to anything 
that will stop the whistle. Lay awake 
three weeks last night. The chill today 
gnaws at one's backbone. Why do people 
come to sea? Not for the food certainly. 
I detected traces of antimony, fish glue, 
hair oil and oakum in my oatmeal. 

Every one is grumpy and disgruntled. 
Prepared a large list of new answers last 
night, but the question business was very 
poor this morning. The girls have de- 
veloped a more serious pastime. Five of 
them have wept on my collar and have de- 
manded to be sent back before they die of 

61 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



homesickness. I hate having girls weep 
on me. Besides, I have no comfort to 
offer. Everything is wrong. The ship 
has a thousand new smells. Half our 
girls are on the windy side of the ship and 
are freezing, because it seems that wher- 
ever the steward places your dollar chair 
there you have to stay until you reach 
port. Maybe we are going somewhere, 
but I doubt it. Wish I trusted the captain 
more fully. All we seem to be doing is to 
be accumulating more fog and wet. 

The Missouri girl has given up. She 
just can't sleep with a life preserver on and 
would as soon drown as die of insomnia. 
She is the girl who walked down fourteen 
stories from her room in New York to get 
a lamp. She has also missed two meals 
because she didn't know why the bugle 
was being blown. I have appointed 

Misses B and F to enlighten her 

on travel matters. I rely a great deal 
upon those two young ladies. THey are 

62 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



perpetual wellsprings of information. 
This morning they told me the Marconi 
operator's past life, the way to get a hand- 
out before the breakfast hour, and the 
names of seven more college boys and two 
officers in second cabin. 

Dull, dank afternoon and getting stead- 
ily damper. Mrs. X caught me after a 

long stern chase and formally announced 
that I had ruined her trip by placing her 
in a stateroom just under the whistle. 
She says if I were a real man I'd stop it. 
Also, that she positively will not room 
another minute with the Missouri girl. 

Little Miss M is very much agitated 

because the Marconi operator, who is a 
young " smart Alec ", told her that there 
was a run on the Grand Banks and our 
money wouldn't be good in Europe. In 
revenge I have spread the rumor that 
messages will be sent free on application 
.at the wireless office. Mrs. X im- 
mediately abandoned me for new prey and 

63 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



gave him a letter to transmit. She is now 
in the writing room reporting him for 
neglect of duty. It does not pay to get 
gay with our party. I am a lion on de- 
fense. 

Even the cheery little Chicago stenog- 
rapher has a complaint. " What do you 
know about this old barge?'' she asked. 
" They feed you five times a day whether 
you want it or not, and then when you ask 
for a little dish of ice cream they haven't 
got it. If I had a ship this size and didn't 
have a soda fountain on it I'd ask the dead 
wagon to call for me. A hundred girls on 
the ship and no ice cream! And no gum! 
And pie ! Say, they think pie is something 
to wear, I guess. Tell me straight now, 
pal, do we go two months without ice 
cream?" 

Miss K asked if she could cut out 

all the Netherlands except Amsterdam, 
and stay there while we did the rest of it. 
She thinks by cutting down the trip a little 

64 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



she can get it all read up in advance. The 
poor thing is discouraged. Would try to 
cheer her up, but I have worries of my 

own. Our beautiful Miss S has now 

spent two days looking over the rail with 
a lanky youth who wears a Princeton 
watch fob. I don't like this. I guaran- 
teed to return twenty-four girls, but noth- 
ing was said about sons-in-law. Must 
speak firmly to some one about it. But to 
whom? 

At noon we were only 1060 miles from 
New York. Sea still smooth, weather 
villainous, fog slightly thicker than a 
feather bed, barometer falling, passengers 
miserable, ship's help maddeningly com- 
placent. They seem to thrive on fog and 

woe. Sat and listened to Miss T 

mourning for her lost home until I couldn't 
stand it any longer, and then rushed for 
the smoking room. There I talked with a 
young red-headed chap from Omaha. I 
like him because this is his first voyage. 

6s 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 






Suddenly old Mr. Fourteen Crossings bore 
down on us. '^ Ah, boys ! '' he exclaimed. 
" Getting your sea legs ? " 

Yep," said the red-headed boy. 

Your first trip? " 

Number Fourteen drew himself up. 
" This is my fourteenth crossing,'' he said 
with quiet grandeur. 

The red-headed boy didn't even bat an 
eye. "Atlantic or Pacific?" he asked. 

" I have never crossed the Pacific," said 
Number Fourteen stifily. 

The red-headed boy yawned elaborately. 
'' I don't see why people want to paddle 
around on this duck pond," he said. 
" Now, you'd think a man of your oppor- 
tunities would like to travel. Why don't 
you cross the Pacific? You fossils around 
the East ferry across this slough until a 
real ocean would scare you. Ever been on 
a Pacific ground swell? No? Oh, dear! 
You landlubbers can't realize what motion 

is. Now off Yokohama '* 

66 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



" That's the seventh deck-chair mariner 
Fve paralyzed with the Pacific/' he said 
happily as Number Fourteen slid out of 
the door. ^' They can't stand it any more 
than mosquitoes can stand kerosene." 

" Have you been on the Pacific much? " 
I asked with awe. 

He smoked a minute, eying me care- 
fully. " I've been to Catalina," he said, 
with a grin. 

I have been to Catalina, too, but I never 
thought of using it as a defense. That's 
the difference between great minds and 
little ones. This chap will be President 
some day. 

Evening. Have been lying in my berth 
to get away from the whistle. The purser 
has just come down to tell me that he has 

given Mrs. X , at her insistence, a 

room in the extreme front of the boat, 
where the air is better. Wonder why he 
smiled when he said it. She has this room 

67 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



all to herself, and, because no one wants 
to room with the poor Missouri girl, he 
has stuck her into an empty suite on the 
promenade deck, where she has a sitting 
room and bath. Somehow both of these 
arrangements have revived my belief that 
the meek will inherit the earth. 

Discoveries : Passage on this ship costs 
a large sum of money. Then you have to 
pay a dollar to sit down during the voyage. 
You are also expected to pay the salaries 
of the help by tips, and now I discover that 
we must give or listen to a concert to sup- 
port the families of the poor sailors. This 
news was broken to me by a girl in a red 
tam-o'-shanter who has passed me a hun- 
dred times without even trying to avoid 
stepping on me. Today she stopped me. 
" Do you sing, play anything, do sleight- 
of-hand tricks, recite, or make a speech? " 
she demanded imperiously. 

"No," said I. "Why?" 

68 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



" I am getting up the concert/' she said 
rapidly. " One dollar, please." 

I gave it to her and she passed on with- 
out thanking me. Now I know why Miss 

L and Miss J have been working 

out so faithfully in the music room. They 
have been trying to qualify for the concert. 
I must get them on the program. Miss 

L sings beautifully, but if Miss J 

performs it will ruin the whole affair and 
afford me much joy. For two cents I'd 
sing myself. Still, there are innocent 
people on board. 

Tuesday, July 8. This morning I awoke 
with a strange feeling of suspense. It 
grew on me until I was waiting breath- 
lessly for something that wasn't coming. 
Then I realized that the foghorn wasn't 
blowing. When I got on deck — hurrah! 
• — there was the ocean — miles of it, clear 
and blue and coming down on us in ridges. 

As I looked, flattened against the deck 

69 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



house by the wind, I saw a commotion 

below. It consisted of Misses B and 

E floating slowly down the deck in a 

cataract. They had crawled under the 
rope which was supposed to keep passen- 
gers away from the bows, and had been 
enjoying the scenery, when the ship took 
a small sea over the rail. There was tre- 
mendous enthusiasm on the part of all who 
witnessed the performance. 

Every one feels better. Ocean travel is 
a grand thing after all. Since the fog lifted, 
the ship has changed from a dead hotel to 
a thing of life — a happy, swaying, swing- 
ing, singing creature. Now I know why 
the front end of a vessel is called the 
" bow." 

We bow regularly four times a minute 
to the universe, and about once every 
two minutes we come down on top of 
a wave with a crash which sends up 
clouds of spray. The thermometer and 
barometer are sinking, but all other spirits 

70 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



rising — except those of the Princeton boy. 

Miss S is being escorted around the 

deck by a Scotch boy with a burr which 
sounds Hke a dentist's drill. Am much 
relieved. 

I find that Misses B and E^ have 

been on the bridge at last. The captain is 
a patient man, but his nerve broke after 
the tenth assault. Revenge is sweet! 
This afternoon they are going down to 
see the engines with the third assistant 
engineer. Sometimes I wish I was a 
woman — too nice-looking a woman to be 
ejected from places with rough, knobby 
language. 

Met the purser this afternoon. He has 

a look of holy calm. " Is Mrs. X 

satisfied with her stateroom?" I asked. 

" She is not," he said. '' She is less 
satisfied than hany woman I ever saw. 
But the stewardess says she won't be hable 
to make 'er formal complaint till the 
weather moderates." 

71 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



I am beginning to have a respect for 
pursers. 

At noon today we were 1540 miles from 
New York. Barometer still falling gradu- 
ally, sky overcast, a ten-mile procession of 
waves coming regularly at us from ahead, 
and ventilation much better. True worth 
and modesty are winning out. Crowds of 
Prairie Roses are visiting the Missouri girl 
in her palatial apartments, and I am also 
becoming steadily more popular. Many 
total and persistent strangers have spoken 
to me today, and the royal pair who sit at 
my table have asked me if I can't get the 
red-headed boy transferred to a vacant 
chair beside me so we can have a friendly 
little party. They also asked me a great 
deal about his past career. 

I believe I know why they have thawed: 
The red-headed boy ate breakfast with me, 
and when Her Highness and consort sailed 
in and began doing some kippered herring 
the honor of eating it my friend began 

72 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



talking to me in large, round tones. He 
recalled the trip we had on old man 
Plunk's steam yacht, called Palm Beach 
shoddy, deplored the growing popularity 
of dear old Bermuda, and told some New- 
port Casino gossip. I followed his lead as 
well as I could, and when our audience left 
they smiled in the most friendly way. 

Mentioned the results to the red-headed 
boy just now. "Good!" he said. "I 
thought that old girl was running a big 
bluff. She's the bellwether of some three- 
story town and knows how to put up a 
front, but I figured that a private yacht 
would just about cave it in. Stood ready 
to run a country place over her if neces- 
sary. I've come to the conclusion that 
steamship passengers are divided socially 
into two classes — good liars and poor liars. 
Your haughty friend and I are good liars, 
and we trot in the upper circles and are 
much admired. You are a poor liar and 
get walked on. I've just taken the liberty 

73 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



of spreading the report that you own a 
few newspapers. It will pay you big/' 

For this trip only I have become a mag- 
nate. The red-headed boy has agreed also 
to spread some interesting rumors about 

our girls. Miss L is to be an opera 

singer, and several of the others are to 
become suddenly prosperous. It is my 
duty to add to their enjoyment, and if 
rumors will do it I shall not hesitate. 

Evening. The Cambodia has increased 
the depth of her bows and she lurches a 
little. We have just passed a sailing ship 
driving west under a few sails, her masts 
sweeping from side to side in a terrifying 
arc. After all I'm glad I am not a fore- 
father. Being a descendant is a lot more 
comfortable. 

Misses B and E have been sick 

all day. They got into the pantry last 
night, with the assistance of a venal stew- 
ard, had a party and over-ate themselves. 

74 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



The purser has asked me to recover from 
them the badge from his cap, the little flags 
off of the ship's course chart, and seven 
napkins with the ship's name on them. 
Misses B and E have appropri- 
ated all of these as souvenirs. Sometimes 
I think one can be too enterprising. 

The girl in the red tam has asked me to 
help take up the collection at the concert. 
She is very charming and affable. At my 

suggestion she has put Misses L and 

J- on the program. She is very 

anxious to play shuflleboard, and offers to 
get up a party if I v^ill join it. She also 
wants to meet all the Prairie Roses. She 
thinks they are delightful. I cannot help 
thinking that it is no wonder some people 
become chronic liars. See how it pays! 

Wednesday, July 9. Last night the ship 
grumbled and complained, and my trunk 
traveled in a heavy, awkward fashion all 
over the stateroom. Dressing was a 

75 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



chore. I ran downhill to get my clothes 
and had to toil back up to look in the glass. 
There is a full orchestra in the rigging this 
morning and it is colder than ever. The 
ocean is a restless blue-black waste, hump- 
ing up constantly into hills and tossing up 
white arms all around the horizon. At- 
tendance at breakfast was very poor. 
Every one seems unusually thoughtful. 
Old Number Fourteen Voyages is in the 
smoking room, very glum. Twenty-seven 
Crossings had ptomaine poisoning last 
night and can hardly speak. The eminent 
Mr. Twenty-fifth Voyage and Hold-on-to- 
Your-First-Impressions is a puddle of 
nothing in his deck chair. 

I do not feel well myself. Ocean travel 
is a bore. It is not stormy, but there is a 
motion which is exceedingly monotonous. 
Every fifteen seconds I see the horizon 
shoot suddenly up at the stern of the ship 
and disappear over the roof of the prome- 
nade deck. Then it comes slowly down 

76 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



again until there is only a waste of 
troubled water. It repeats this with mad- 
dening persistence while my whole interior 
tries to hold the ship level. 

On the whole I like a restless horizon a 
little less than an industrious foghorn. 
My criticism of the ocean is that there is 
too much of it. I have had my money's 
worth already, and we have six hundred 
miles more. That means that the horizon 
must come up something like seventy-five 

hundred times and sink away again. I do 
not like this prospect 

Thursday, July lo. No records avail- 
able. 

Friday, July 1 1. I am better today. So 
is the ship. It still bows, but it doesn't 
gesticulate. We are to sight Malin Head 
this evening, and once more I am the 
center of a whirling mass of girls asking 
questions. Only this time it is not a 

77 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



pastime with them. It is a deadly seri- 
ous business. Poor things! They have 
learned to trust me and they don't trust 
the stranger who is to meet them. How 
can they? They don't know him. Willi 
continue to take care of them? Do we 
land in small boats? How do you get on 
an English train? Can any one talk 
Scotch? How much shall we tip? Will 
the customs officers confiscate a teeny box 
of candy? Is there any danger of our 
being carried by Glasgow? What should 
they wear going ashore? 

I answer questions for an hour, and then 
escape and receive attentions from the 
ship's staff for the next hour. The hired 
help is wonderfully attentive today. I 
have met several of them I hadn't seen be- 
fore. A young boy has just informed me 
that he would have blacked my shoes every 
morning if I had put them out at night. 
The librarian has offered me the freedom 
of the case. Also met my room steward 

78 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



this morning. He is very pleasant. But 
the captain is still chilly. This relieves 
me. Apparently I am not expected to tip 
him. 

Noon. Every few minutes I go in and 
look at the little flag on the ocean chart. 
It's mighty close to Ireland. Seems like 
coming back to life and earth already. 
Wonder how the ball games came out dur- 
ing the last week. Just remembered that 
there were ball games. The girls are pack- 
ing, and most of them are trying to recover 
various articles of clothing borrowed dur- 
ing the week by Misses B and E . 

Miss K is pale and unhappy. She is 

feverishly wading through her German 
Baedeker, but is losing hope. " I have still 
Switzerland and France to read up on," 
she explained, " and my head aches fright- 
fully. If I don't get it all done before to- 
morrow ril miss something I ought to see. 
What shall I do?" 

79 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



I asked Miss O 's advice about it. 

" Tell her to look up the American soda 
fountains and let it go at that/* she said 
airily. " I don't care two snaps for all the 
dead kings in Europe, but Fll bet I see as 
many live kings as any one. What I want 
to know is, do we get this kind of food all 
the time? Just chloroform me till we get 
through England, please, if we do. I 
never supposed a cook could do so many 
mean things to a potato. Say ! If an Eng- 
lish cook tried to serve watermelon whole 
he'd spoil it some way. I brought ten 
pounds of milk chocolate, but it isn't 
going to last. Say, if I should meet a 
piece of pie right now, wouldn't there be 
a ' wrassle ' ? " 

Two stewards have just helped Mrs. 

X- on deck. She is a ruin. She 

motioned me feebly to her and tried to 
have me discharge the purser, but she 
couldn't put any heart in it. On the other 

hand. Miss D is infernally lively. She 

80 



AT SEA WITH 'EM 



has looked up all the rules for landing, and 
is trying to coach me on them. If she 
persists I shall take to the rigging. 

Only three hundred and fifty miles from 
Glasgow, and getting nearer with every 
wallow. Every one is happy but the red- 
headed boy. He is despondent. Miss 
S — — , who rode gloriously through yes- 
terday's storm with him on the upper deck, 
has fastened her interest on the man with 
white duck trousers today. I am not de- 
spondent myself, but just mad. The girl 
in the red tam passed me this morning 
without even suspecting it. I must have 
lost my newspapers overnight. 

Evening. The Scotch on the steerage 
deck below are singing " Rolling Home " 
in tones that grip the heart. The sunset 
is magnificent. A little fishing craft, look- 
ing like a dove returning to the ark, is 
tossing by us. The concert is going on, 

but I am not attending. Miss J has 

8i 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



just finished her song and people are com- 
ing up gasping for air. The girl in the red 
tarn is relentlessly driving them back, to 
wait for the collection. How I hate that 
girl! 

We go to sleep tonight, and awake at 
Greenock. Europe will come like a dream 
while we sleep. I could write poetry to- 
night. After all, ocean travel is wonder- 
ful. 

There is a bright star almost dead 
ahead. 

It has winked. The deck officer has his 
glass on it. It is Malin Head light! Land 
at last! 

Bedtime. I am a happy man. The 
concert was a fiasco and I was responsible. 
It was an inspiration. Just as the last 
number began I poked my head in the 
door and shouted : '' Land ahead ! " In 
fifteen seconds no one was in the room but 
the soloist, abandoned on high C, and the 

82 



AT SEA WITH ^EM 



girl with the red tarn. And nobody ever 
came back for the collection. 

Ah-hum. Wonder how FlI identify 
that conductor. He's got to give me a 
receipt for every girl. 



83 



CHAPTER IV 

DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

AS the Cambodia steamed slowly 
up the winding Clyde, with ship- 
yards and scenery unfolding on 
either side before my overworked eyes, I 
was full of anxious doubts. My responsi- 
bilities as guide and shepherd of twenty- 
four young women, winners of newspaper 
circulation contests in the West and now 
known to fame as " The Prairie Roses," 
were over. And yet I worried. I couldn't 
help it. Europe seemed too large a place 
into which to dump twenty-four ambitious 
young women, unguarded save by the one 
foreign conductor, unacquainted with 
American girls, who was to meet them at 
the landing. Even if he should be a good 
conductor he would be lucky if he had 

84 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

fifteen of them left the first night. And 
so I stewed and fretted. 

The conductor met us as we left the 
ship. He was a youngish Italian, well 
dressed and supernaturally calm. I 
waited patiently, w^hile we worked through 
the customs, for him to come and unlock 
my store of information. But he didn't 
ask a question. He stuffed us into seven 
ancient carriages driven by seven frayed 
Scots with red whiskers, and sent us boun- 
cing over the cobblestones through the 
umbrageous heart of Glasgow, to a vast, 
silent hotel, where we partook of a light 
British lunch of soup, fish, roast beef, 
pigeon pie, cold chicken and lamb, salad 
and four kinds of dessert; and Adolf o 
Paradoni, with twenty-four young women 
and twenty-five trunks on his hands, ate 
more than any of us. His only worry 
seemed to be the fact that he had gone 
without his breakfast while waiting for 
the steamer. 

8s 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



It annoyed me. The man seemed to 
have no idea of his predicament. In his 
place I should have been pale and per- 
spiring. A little lesson, I thought, would 
do Mr. Paradoni much good. It would 
be better to educate him in Glasgow, 
close to America, than to let him accumu- 
late his experience in the far reaches of 
Europe, remote from help. The girls 
were anxious to see Glasgow, so I asked 
if they could go out for a little while. I 
did it maliciously. By the time this brash 
Italian had collected the party he would 
hobble humbly up to the bureau of infor- 
mation and partake thereof. 

" Indeed, yes,'' said Paradoni eagerly. 
" Let them go out and enjoy themselves. 
I shall stay here and finish my arrange- 
ments. But, young ladies, remember, if 
you are not back here by seven o'clock you 
can get no dinner." 

Immediately the party exploded in all 
directions. I offered my services to five 

86 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

- - ^ — - 

girls and with great courage took them 
riding on a two-story street car. The 
conductor spoke a wonderful variety of 
telescoped English, studded with cockle- 
burs, and I understood him as readily 
as if he talked Sioux. But every time he 
came around I paid some more fare and 
we had no trouble at all. We rode around 
forty corners, through seven showers and 
out into the suburbs, where the car ran 
out of track at a cemetery. 

It was a dilapidated modern cemetery 
with no especial charm, and the scenery 
about consisted entirely of children aver- 
aging one face wash per regiment. So 
we stuck to the street car and in due time 
we landed at the hotel again. It was a 
great feat. No real guide could have 
done better. Occasionally the girls got 
restless and wanted to get off and get lost, 
but I restrained them sternly. I wanted 
those five for a nest egg when we started 
out to hunt the rest. 

87 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



Some of the girls had already returned 
and were waiting for dinner. At six 
o'clock four more arrived. They had seen 
a service at the cathedral, had bought a 
dozen souvenir cards apiece and were 
ravenously hungry. A few minutes later 
four more checked in. They had got into 
a shipyard by some mysterious means and 
had seen great wonders. They had also 
had tea in a fascinating little hole in the 
wall. 

A few minutes later three more girls 
hurried in to dress for dinner and told me 
as they rushed by that they had got lost 
four times and that it was more fun talk- 
ing to Scotch policemen than going to 
vaudeville. They were followed by Misses 

B and E , very much out of 

breath. They had run blocks, they said, 
to get back on time. At fivt minutes be- 
fore seven the timid Miss T , the last 

of the twenty-four, hurried in. She had 
been calling on a relative in the suburbs. 

88 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

We ate dinner a united family, and the 
only disgruntled girls in the bunch were 
the ones whom I had preserved so care- 
fully all afternoon. They acted as if I 
had done them out of something. It was 
depressing to listen to them, and irritating 
to watch Mr. Paradoni, who didn't even 
take the trouble to count the party when it 
was assembled. He was insufferably con- 
fident. 

" Never mind," I thought ; " you may 
handle this party by scaring it to death in 
this brutal manner, but what are you 
going to do with the trunks? You can't 
intimidate a trunk. It doesn't eat and, 
moreover, it doesn't come when it is 
called. You're happy tonight, but just 
wait. . By the time you've herded twenty- 
five trunks around the country for a few 
days you'll take more interest in proceed- 
ings. I know these trunks. They are 
phenomenally skittish." 

But after dinner Paradoni asked us all 

89 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



to pack our suitcases for four days — after 
which he shipped our trunks to London 
en masse. It was a cowardly trick. 
Any one can dodge trouble. 

In the morning we tackled Europe 
formally by going to Edinburgh. It is an 
hour's ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh, 
but no tourist will waste an hour on this 
trip when he can put in a whole day on it. 
So we stuffed ourselves into a series of 
coops on wheels, drawn by an engine so 
small that the girls wanted to steal it for 
a souvenir, and went to Loch Lomond. 
There we boarded a small steamer and 
went swiftly past Ben Lomond, Ben Voir- 
lich, Ben Cruachan and other colossal, 
mist-covered mountains so majestic that 
little Miss M was overcome with re- 
spect and insisted on calling them " Ben- 
jamins." 

The girls were enraptured, and while 

Miss K hunted frantically for the 

points of interest, checking them off in her 

90 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

Baedeker as she found them, they drank 
in deep gulps of the soggy, misty Scotch 
atmosphere and longed for heather. At 
a small pier a ragged boy came timidly 
aboard with a little bunch of this charm- 
ing vegetable. There was a battle for it, 
but Miss L— — won out. She gave the 
boy two shillings and was the heroine of 
the party for an hour. 

By that time other ragged Scotch boys 
had come aboard at other piers and had 
supplied the party at a liberal discount. 
Later, regiments of ragged Highlanders 
charged us with baskets and bales of 
heather, and we also passed through miles 
of it waiting to be picked, but nobody 
stopped to revel in it. Procrastination 
may be a great thief of time, but it is also 
the watchdog of the pocketbook when 
touring. 

We crossed the famous Trossachs by 
wagon. They were not prehistoric 
animals, as Miss M had been led to 

91 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



imagine, but pine woods peopled with 
Highlanders assaulting us with bagpipes. 
We lunched at Stronachacher, a place 
which when pronounced correctly sounds 
as if it had just laid an egg. And then we 
found another steamer and set out on 
Loch Katrine. 

. Loch Katrine reeks more with history, 
if possible, than Loch Lomond, and it is 
also fair to look upon. But it was 
neglected that day. The mist had thick- 
ened and blew through cloaks and bones 
indifferently. One by one the girls took 
their chattering teeth and went down to 
the cabin. Only the Iowa school-teacher 

and Miss K remained, the latter still 

working doggedly through her Baedeker, 
several laps behind. I retreated at last 
and went into the cabin myself. Twenty- 
two girls were playing cards contentedly 
while Scott's haunts rushed by them. 

Suddenly Miss K rushed down the 

stairs 

92 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

"Girls, girls, come quickly!" she cried. 
" Here's Ellen's Isle." 

Nobody stirred except Miss O . 

She looked up and yawned. " Is it a big 
island? " she asked. 

" She must be fond of rain," said Miss 
B — -. 

" Give her my regards," said Miss 
E . " What's trumps ? " 

Edinburgh is twice as old as Glasgow 
but only half as large. This is because 
the climate has had more time to work on 
the population. It was busily gnawing 
away at the survivors when we arrived in 
the evening. There was a bleak July wind 
with mist-and-rain trimmings, and after 
the girls had endured their clammy apart- 
ments for a few minutes they gave up, one 
by one, and ordered fires. 

The amazement of the manager, who in- 
sisted that it was unusually warm for a 
northeast wind, was equaled by the con- 
sternation of the girls when they dis- 

93 



# 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



covered that a toy bucketful of coals 
would cost them a shilling. But there 
was no help for it. We weren't hardened 
to Scotch summer weather. I ordered a 
fire myself. The maid brought up four 
cents' worth of combustibles in seven 
dollars' worth of brass utensils, and built 
such a miserable, shivering, pun}^ little fire 
that it touched my heart. It was cruelty 
to leave a fire like that in a vast, cold room. 
But when I broke up a couple of lead 
pencils and piled the debris on it, it braced 
up and made a very cheerful effect. 

We toured Edinburgh in a barge the 
next day, with half a thousand ragged 
children turning cartwheels for pennies 
beside us and romance unwinding in a 
double reel on each side. It was inspiring 
to view the places where Scotch history 
seethed and fermented and boiled over; 
the kirkyard where an ambitious state 
church tried to imprison Presbyterianism; 
the palace where Mary Queen of Scots was 

94 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

accustomed to wed; and the castle against 
whose rocky feet hundreds of years of ill- 
feeling beat with very brief intermissions. 

But even more inspiring was it to hear 

Miss D dispense information as we 

rolled along. Knowledge had no chance 

with Miss D . She grabbed it as it 

went by, choked it into submission, and 
loaned it to everybody who came along 
from then on. She had read up on Edin- 
burgh the night before and it was an open 
book to her. 

" This is the castle, girls. It is nine 
thousand years old — no, nine hundred, I 
think it is. From here you can see the 
Cheviot Hills, where they make the cloth. 
We are now on Princess Street. It was 
named after Tennyson's great poem. 
This is Sir Walter Scott's monument. It 
is hundreds of years old. Oh, no, dear, I 
looked it up last night. Well, maybe it 
was the church — oh, yes, it's St. Giles' 
Church that is so old. We're coming to 

95 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



that pretty soon. You'll be fascinated by 
it. It is Early Perp. Jennie Geddes 
threw a stool at the minister there. This 
is the University — no, it's the barracks — 
oh, thank you, sir. The gentleman says 
it's Holyrood Palace. Bloody Mary lived 
there, you know. And that big hill is 
Arthur's Seat, where the round table was. 
Isn't it wonderful to see all these places? " 

Take it all in all it was a wonderfully 
inspiring day. What the guidebook fell 
down on in the line of wonders Miss 

D supplied, while Miss K and the 

Iowa school-teacher chanted Scotch his- 
tory from one end of the city to the other, 

and Miss R , who had a very tender 

heart, wept over Stevenson's tablet in St. 
Giles' and on Mary Stuart's bed in Holy- 
rood, and wherever the facilities for grief 
were unusually good. 

But later in the afternoon considerable 
jealousy developed on account of Miss 
R and Miss S . They had Scotch 

96 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

blood in their veins, and, after reminding 
the party of the fact all day, they bought 
steamer rugs in their clan tartans and 
paraded them about the hotel until there 
was a good deal of ill-feeling. Suddenly 

Miss P -, who was totally Teutonic, 

disappeared. Half * an hour later she 
walked happily in with a steamer rug in 
the brilliant Stewart tartan. Misses 
R and S pounced on her indig- 
nantly. 

" You don't belong to that clan ! " they 
cried. 

" I don't care," said Miss P calmly. 

" I can if I want to. There's the nicest 
Stewart boy back home you ever saw, and 
I haven't absolutely turned him down 
yet." 

We started for Warwick the next morn- 
ing. One of the advantages of the band- 
box passenger cars used in Great Britain 
is the ease with which special ones can be 
secured. Our party just fitted a car. It 

97 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



was a nice car with a corridor on one side 
and door windows, which were a stunning 
rebuke to all American railroads. A mere 
child could open them, and when the girls 
realized that for once they were not de- 
pendent upon scarce and unskilled men 
they took advantage of the fact by poking 
their heads out at every stop and discours- 
ing with all England which happened to 
be within range. 

" Please, sir, will you tell us the name of 
this town?'' "Conductor, do we stop here 
long enough to get souvenir cards ? '' 
" Porter, how do they water the passen- 
gers on this train? I'm dying of thirst." 
"Are we on time, conductor?" "Little 
boy, please tell that restaurant on wheels 
to come over here and sell me some milk 
chocolate." "Porter, is that a duke? 
Pshaw, girls, he says, it's just a traveling 
man. What would a traveling man do in 
the United States with all those whisk- 
ers?" "Station master, can you tell me 

98 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

if this is the town where Queen Elizabeth 
boxed the mayor's ears?" 

I should have been perfectly happy if it 
had not been for Paradoni. The man's 
efficiency was insufferable. The girls 
followed him like sheep. So did the suit- 
cases. Cab drivers treated him as an 
equal. He got us to the train half an 
hour early that morning and read news- 
papers on the journey instead of counting 
his railway tickets and breaking out in a 
light perspiration every time a girl got out 
on a station platform. 

It was a low, contemptible spirit to 
show, but I longed and panted for trouble. 

I pinned my faith to the Misses B and 

E . Paradoni had to hold a train for 

them on our first day while they wandered 
off and ate a lunch. When the calm pro- 
prietor of the inn heard the train coming 
he charged them six shillings apiece. 
They didn't have time to argue about it, 
but had to pay and were much depressed 

99 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



for several hours. So on the whole Para- 
doni had the best of it. 

At Birmingham, however, we got off the 
train and drove about for an hour past 
miles of impenetrable hedges, behind 
which lurked Englishmen reveling in a 
peculiarly damp and dreary privacy. And 
my hopes rose because the unheavenly 
twins disappeared on the way back. Five 
minutes before train time Paradoni asked 
if I had seen them. It was a thrilling 
moment. Triumph was near. Three 
minutes later he came to me with every 
indication of deep worry. 

" The Misses B and E I have 

not found," he said anxiously. " They 
have slipped away. The train leaves in a 
minute. What would you do? " 

The sweet moment had been long de- 
layed, but it was worth waiting for. I 
offered to convoy the party to Warwick 
while he searched Birmingham, and as the 
train started he thrust the tickets into my 

lOO 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

hands and waved good-by to the party. I 
tried to spread a thick layer of unconcern 
over my face, but it was not entirely suc- 
cessful. 

To begin with I had no faith in the 
train. I had tried to follow our route 
when we left Edinburgh that morning, but 
just as I had prepared to enter Manchester 
we had pulled into Leeds, shaking my 
confidence villainously. 

There is nothing more depressing than 
to be locked up in an English train with 
no way of asking information except by 
pulling a bell rope (fine, one pound). I 
didn't even have a conductor to lean on. 
He had looked over the tickets before we 
started. We stopped at Coventry and 
then dashed on. 

Suddenly a guard tore open the door. 
''Your station, sir!'' he said. ''Quickly, 
please." 

I disinterred girls and baggage from the 
several compartments while the conductor 

lOI 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



kept his eye on his watch and said, 
" Lively now, please, thank you," every 
few seconds. As the carriage doors 
slammed I chanced to see a station sign. 
It read '' Leamington/' 

The train was slipping out like a ghost. 
" Stop ! " I yelled, grabbing a guard. 
" We want to go to Warwick." 

" Train doesn't go to Warwick, sir," 
said the guard, breaking away from me 
and catching his train. The rest of his 
sentence was lost in the distance. 

Twenty-two girls compassed me about 
and demanded to be taken at once to War- 
wick. A panic was imminent, but my 
iron nerve saved the situation. I lighted 
a cigar, after dropping four matches to 
show my calmness, and then faced the 
party. 

" Girls," I said, " this EngHsh train has 
deceived us. It is guilty of a confidence 
game. We shall see it when we return. 
In the meantime don't worry. England 

I02 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

is small. We cannot be seriously lost in 
it. Follow me and see what a cool man 
does in an emergency." 

Amid the respectful admiration of all I 
walked firmly over to the telegraph office, 
where I wired the' circumstances to Para- 
doni at Birmingham, the tourist agency in 
London and a newspaper friend in Liver- 
pool, asking for instant help. Then I 
bought magazines for all and installed the 
girls in the waiting room, leaving direc- 
tions at the telegraph office to deliver any 
message instantly, posted myself as guard 
at the door and waited. 

Dusk descended. The girls finished 
their magazines and began to get restless. 
Some of them wandered out of the waiting 
room, but I shooed them back firmly. It 
was easier to keep track of them in the 
room. Lights began to twinkle around 
the country. Several of the girls were 
becoming noticeably homesick. Murmur- 
ing against myself became alarmingly 

103 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



frequent. It hurt me to the marrow. I 
had done my best. I had saved them so 
far. If they wanted new dangers well 
and good. We would go to Warwick if 
we landed in Cork on the way. I told 
them this and went to the ticket office and 
demanded tickets to Warwick in a firm 
voice. 

" You don't need tickets, sir," said the 
youth at the window. " Take the tram in 
the street. It's only a mile." 

The hotel staff at Warwick was very 
sympathetic. It had been waiting for us 
since six o'clock. In half an hour the girls 
came down from their rooms fresh as 
daisies and shrieking with enthusiasm. 
The hotel was an old one, and each room 
was an antique exhibit in itself. The 
Missouri girl was especially fortunate. 
She had been assigned to a room once 
occupied by Queen Victoria and was the 
heroine of the evening. The girls visited 
her in a body and one by one sat on the 

104 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

bed with awe. Then they had supper and 
slipped away to their rooms to rest and 
admire. 

I had just settled myself in the coffee 
room in the middle breadths of a two-acre 
English newspaper when cries of anguish 
came floating down the stairs. I rushed 
up in search of them. The Prairie Roses 
were gathered in front of the Queen 
Victoria room comforting the Missouri 
girl, who was weeping. The hotel man- 
ager was arguing frantically with some 
one inside the room. His voice was 
hushed and low, but the answers were not. 
They floated out from inside strong and 
clear. 

"I will not leave this room ! I don't care 
if it is her room! I have been slighted in 
rooms ever since we left home. It's time 
I had a good room! I'm going to sleep 
in this room, and if you don't like it you 
can come in and pull me out ! I know my 
rights ! You can talk here all night if you 

105 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



like, but if you get me out you'll have to 
carry me out ! " 

I recognized the voice. It w^as Mrs. 

X 's. She had wanted the Queen 

Victoria room, and in her simple, direct 
fashion she had gone upstairs early and 
gone to bed in it. 

We were helpless in the face of such 
strategy. The Missouri girl sobbed on 
and things were getting soggy and un- 
comfortable when the manager cleared 
his throat. " If the lady positively re- 
fuses to leave the room," he said, '' I sup- 
pose I must let the other young lady sleep 
in the Queen Elizabeth room. We rarely 
use this room, but it seems to be an emer- 
gency." 

There was a diplomat for you! In five 

seconds Mrs. X was holding on 

doggedly to a forgotten prize and twenty- 
one girls were exclaiming over the Eliz- 
abethan room. It was a wonderful room, 
too, because it was at least a century older 

io6 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 



than the hotel. But nobody minded this 
or thought of it, and if the manager 
stretched the truth a little he did so in a 
good cause. 

At eleven o'clock Paradoni arrived de- 
pressed. He had examined Birmingham 
with great care and no results. But a 
little later, while we were preparing a 
general alarm, one of the early Silurian 
automobiles of that period clattered up to 

the hotel and Misses B and E - 

strolled in, quite happy. They had missed 
the train purposely and had then found 
that they had very little money. This, 
however, had not worried them. They 
had gone on to Coventry, had wheedled a 
hotel keeper out of a dinner, and had per- 
suaded a touring party whom they met at 
the hotel to bring them to Warwick. 
They had had a splendid time. 

In the morning we drove to Stratford- 
upon-Avon in a large hack fitted with 
bilge pumps, water-tight compartments 

107 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



and all equipment for English weather 
except a top. It rained all the way. 
English rain is quiet and undemonstra- 
tive, but thorough. It fell on the twenty- 
odd umbrellas and mobilized at the points, 
dripping into laps and down necks with 
great persistence. But fortunately the 
girls had chosen this morning to have an 
attack of the giggles. Fortified by an 
attack of giggles a party of young women 
can encounter a cyclone without giving it 
a passing glance. 

At the market square in Stratford the 
'^ Prairie Roses " hopped down in a storm 
of hilarity and charged upon Shakespeare's 

shrine, led by Miss O , the little 

Chicago stenographer, who interpreted 
the town to the party in her own peculiar 
way: 

" Mister Shakespeare lived here, girls. 
That's him in the two-foot ruff. I'll bet 
he had to take that ruff off to go up these 
stairs. You say the house used to be a 

io8 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

butcher shop, ma'am? Well, that's all 
right. Everybody butchers Shakespeare 
anyway. This is where he did his writ- 
ing. HowM you like to write a whole 
library with a quill pen? Not for mine. 
Typewriter's bad enough. Gee, look at 
all these pictures! Wonder which one 
looks like him. Look at Tennyson's name 
written on the wall. If we did that they 
would say we were rough necks. You'd 

better watch Miss B , ma'am. She'll 

take that brass kettle for a souvenir. 
She's great on souvenirs. She tried to 
pack a feather bed into her suitcase at 
Warwick. Say, guide, did Shakespeare 
write all the souvenir cards here? 

" Come on, girls, here's another build- 
ing full of Shakespeare relics. This front 
door is built of the bricks he threw at the 
cats while he was writing ' Hamlet.' This 
rubber doormat was given to him by 
Queen Victoria. See this beautiful old 
flatiron. He used to iron out his ruff with 

109 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



this. Now see here, Miss M , youVe 

got to stop laughing. Some one will think 
we don't appreciate Shakespeare. We do, 
though. Didn't we swim ten miles to see 
his tomb? Where is his tomb? I want 

to see Miss R weep over it. Come 

along, Miss R , and weep on Shake- 
speare's tomb. You cried on half the 
tombs in Edinburgh and Shakespeare's 
got to have a fair show. He's a friend of 
mine. He wrote two B's or not two B's, 
that is the question. I have a lot of 
trouble with spelling myself." 

At the end of half an hour most of the 
other tourists were following us with 
wonder if not admiration. We drove back 
to Warwick to the tune of " In the Shade 
of the Old Apple Tree ", and other favor- 
ites, while Miss K and the Iowa 

school-teacher sat unsheltered with the 
driver in the rain, checking up on their 
guidebook and shouting back the informa- 
tion into the umbrella cave. 

no 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

And that evening we reached London. 

We stopped at a four-acre hotel peopled 
by all nations, and for the first time the 
girls seemed to be deeply impressed. 
They took one look at the dazzling display 
of clothes in the lounge and fled for their 
rooms, appearing in the dining room half 
an hour later in their best gowns. 

Some of those gowns looked tolerably 
peculiar. Beside the rigging of half a 
dozen nations they did not loom up with 
any great stunningness. They seemed to 
bulge in the wrong places and to rely too 
much on bows and ribbons and other 
pathetic attempts at decoration. I could 
see lorgnettes going up from various parts 
of the room as the party trooped in. A 
weird-looking dowager whom we passed 
was especially amused. She was sixty in 
years, twenty in clothes and sixteen on her 
cheeks, with a wad of feathers as big as a 
hearse plume in her hair. 

We toured London in the morning in a 

III 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



tremendous brake. For this trip we had 
a special guide — a reserved young Eng- 
lishman, considerably superior and phe- 
nomenally polite. When I descended at 
the Tower without offering to hand down 
the party he directed a look of cold dis- 
approval at me and helped the girls down 
one by one, while Paradoni and I looked 
on, more or less crushed. When we left 
the Tower he leaped to the step of the 
brake and gallantly hoisted each girl in. 
It was a beautiful sight. He repeated the 
feat at the next stop, but I noticed a cer- 
tain restlessness about the girls. 

All of these formalities took time, and 
while the perspiring Englishman was 
doing his best we were falling behind 
schedule. Five minutes in America are a 
small thing, but five minutes in London 
which have been fought and bled for are 
too precious to be wasted in gentlemanly 
derrick work. As the young man took his 
place at the steps at the third stop, those 

112 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

American girls rose to their feet and 
lightly vaulted over the wheels into the 
street on the other side. Thus ended his 
first lesson. He was not so polite after 
that, but much more useful. 

All that day we inspected London, leav- 
ing consternation in our wake. The tourist 
path is full of little formalities and rules, 
which can be waived or overlooked with 
very picturesque results. There is the 
matter of chairs, for instance. London is 
full of historic and inviolate chairs. Our 
party sat in all of them that day. They 
did it calmly and happily, accepting each 
torrent of protest with dignified surprise. 
" I didn't hurt the old thing," said Miss 

E indignantly, when half a dozen 

assistants led her away from the Corona- 
tion Chair in Westminster Abbey. " I'm 
not half as heavy as some of their kings." 

As for the Houses of Parliament, 
through which we were shooed by a line of 
officials, each one shouting, " Lively there 

113 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



now, please ; thank you/' " Keep a-moving 
right along out of that; thank you," the 
regulations stood no show at all. In their 
charmingly inquisitive way those girls 
treated the building as if it had been 
merely the Capitol of the United States. 
They stepped aside into rooms from which 
they were ejected by shocked officials. 
They hung their hats on the pegs reserved 
for lords. Finally, while the party was 
being shown the famous woolsack, pal- 
ladium of British liberties, six girls sat 
down on it with great content. The re- 
sult was unexpected but greatly enjoyed. 
You couldn't have provided as much ex- 
citement by exploding a bomb on the East 
Side in New York. 

By night we had seen half a dozen 
points of interest, and our gentlemanly 
young conductor had a hunted look in his 
eyes. It had been a big day's work, but 
none of the party was satisfied. 

We had five days in London. It was 

114 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 



the unanimous desire of the party to spend 
three of these days shopping. To do this 
the sightseeing would have to be speeded 
up. Mrs. X conveyed this informa- 
tion gently the next morning as we as- 
cended our chariot. 

" See here, young man/' she said 
severely, " you're not doing this job to suit 
us. We're hustlers and we want results. 
We've got to do up the rest of this job to- 
day. Now don't say we can't. We're 
going to. We want to see everything, but 
we don't care to settle down in any one 
place. Just keep us moving. We can see 
a lot in half an hour and it won't hurt to 
trot the horses between stops. Now, 
then, start us for the British Museum. 
Half an hour ought to make a big dent in 
it. You just do the spieling and I'll 
handle the watch." 

Which she did, and records fell that day. 
We did the Museum in thirty-two minutes 
flat. The delay was caused by the dis- 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



appearance of Misses B and E- 



who were discovered trying to chip a 
souvenir off of a mummy case. The Royal 
Art Gallery took twenty-seven minutes, 
including one hundred feet of Turner 
paintings, done from a standing start in 
ten seconds. St. Paul's took half an hour, 
but the Wallace Collection was done in 
fifteen minutes by stop watch. The guide 
said nothing had ever approached this. 
He said it accusingly, but the party 
thanked him for the compliment. 

I felt very sorry for the guide that day. 
It was a hard one for him and he faded 
visibly in the afternoon. He had done his 
best to impress the party, but the results 
had been indifferent. The girls had 
laughed at Hyde Park, had refused to 
weep over the Albert Memorial and had 
had to be restrained by force from pinch- 
ing the Horse Guards in Whitehall to see 
if they were alive. But suddenly he 
brightened. There was a sensation in the 

ii6 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

street ahead of us, and cheering. Our 
brake pulled hastily to the curb, and the 
young man straightened up and faced the 
party. 

" Ladies, ladies," he cried with awed 
elation, ^^ I believe the King is coming! 
You may have a chance to see him. Will 
you all keep very quiet ?'^ 

Poor chap! It was his last card and 
his biggest trump. But did it awe the 
party? I hesitate to record that as an 
automobile bearing a distinguished and 
friendly gentleman dashed by, every 
" Prairie Rose " yanked out an American 
flag from somewhere and gave three 
cheers, while the Missouri girl, who up to 
this minute had been a model of quietness, 
put two fingers in her mouth and blew a 
whistle that could have been heard for 
blocks. A thousand people looked our 
way. So did His Majesty. He not only 
looked, but he bowed and smiled; I might 
almost say he grinned. 

117 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



We drove home without the gentle- 
manly young conductor, who disappeared 
at this minute. In fact we never saw him 
again. He was a nice young man, but too 
sensitive. 

Paradoni and I ate breakfast alone the 
next morning. The girls had already 
gone out about their affairs. We saw 
them at brief intervals and in small 
bunches during the next three days. 
They were exploring London with a 
thoroughness which kept us busy main- 
taining a relief station at the hotel for the 
benefit of young ladies who had spent all 
their money and were being delivered 
C. O. D. by suspicious cabmen. We had 
ceased to worry about them and had de- 
cided to let London do the worrying. 
And London took up the burden earnestly. 
Twenty-four girls conducting individual 
enterprises can produce enough complica- 
tions in three days to worry almost any 
one except the girls themselves. 

ii8 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

A mischievous American correspondent 
produced the deepest alarm. He wrote 
up the party and nicknamed the girls 
"The Fluffy Ruffles." This produced a 
deep impression on the London news- 
paper offices. London, it seems, was full 
of "Fluffy Ruffleses." They might be 
harmless, and on the other hand it might 
be the duty of the city to quarantine and 
call out the home guard. 

A reporter for one of the dailies called 
at the hotel on the last afternoon. He 
was a perfect gentleman and very learned. 
He was also very earnest. He had a 
mission. His paper desired to know what 
" Fluffy Ruffles " were in order that the 
apprehensions of the populace might be 
allayed. 

I tried in a quiet way to give him the 
information, but he was wary. He de- 
manded to talk with the girls themselves. 
Most of the girls were upstairs standing 
on one another's trunk lids, but in half an 

119 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



hour he had collected half a dozen, in- 
cluding Miss O , the red-headed girl 

from Minneapolis, and the Iowa school- 
teacher. 

" Now," he said, taking from his pocket 
a large notebook, " will you young ladies 
be so kind as to answer this question for 
me : What is a ' Fluffy Ruffles ' ? '' 

" We may as well confess," said Miss 
O with a guilty look. ^^ It's a so- 
ciety." 

" Extraordinary," said the reporter 
politely, making profuse notes. 

" Not at all," said Miss O firmly. 

" We've got as good a right to have a so- 
ciety as those Mafia persons." 

" Is it anything like the Mafia — er, I beg 
your pardon," said the reporter hastily, as 
he saw signs of trouble. " I presume it 
has more of the Wild West American 
features. It's very interesting, you know. 
Tell me more." 

" Yes, it's a Western society," said Miss 

I20 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

O- , grabbing the suggestion. " We — 

we ride horses and — and " 

" You shoot, I suppose," said the re- 
porter, writing swiftly. 

" Only in cases of necessity," said the 

Iowa school-teacher quietly. Miss O 

passed on the job with relief. " Tell him 
all about it, MoUie," she said. 

"You see," said the school-teacher, 
" husbands are very scarce in the West, 
and the young men are very arrogant. 
They demand a large premium for marry- 
ing. There are numerous bands of young 
women who combat this disgraceful cus- 
tom. Some of them are very powerful 
and well trained." 

" I never heard anything like this, you 
know," said the enraptured reporter. 
" You mean to say you capture them? " 

" Precisely," said the school-teacher. 
"But we don't shoot them. We lasso 
them and tie them ug until they are 
reasonable." 

121 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



li 



" Oh, I say now," said the reporter. 

This sounds extraordinary, you know. 
You must live very far West — beyond 
Chicago." 

" We do," said the school-teacher. 
" It's really very simple. We meet and 
ride around until we meet a single man 
away from his gang — 
His gang? " 



a 



Every one travels in gangs for protec- 
tion against Indians," said the school- 
teacher. " When we get one we tie him 
up until he is ready to propose, and then 



we " 



'' We draw lots for him," said the Mis- 
souri girl solemnly. " I've had rotten 
luck." 

" Yes, you have, dear," said the Minne- 
apolis girl. '^ Don't you remember that 
lovely little Mexican with the long hair? 
You wanted him so badly too." 

" I did not," said the Missouri girl 
crossly. " He only had one ear anyway." 

122 



DOING GREAT BRITAIN 

" But, ladies, ladies ! " said the reporter 
in a daze. '' This is extraordinary. Do 
you mean to say you actually marry them 
against their wills? " 

" Oh, they're willing enough before we 
get through with them,'' said the school- 
teacher. " Of course I say ' we ' in a 
general sense. None of us has got one 
yet. That is, we have won some, but we 
didn't care for them and traded them off." 

" You can get ten horses for a good 
young husband if he isn't too wild," said 
Miss O . 

"But why," said the reporter, not know- 
ing what else to say, " why are you called 
' The Fluffy Ruffles ' ? " 

"I'll tell you a secret," said the Mis- 
souri girl, leaning over to him. "We're 
going to try our luck on this side. It's 
often done. The only trouble is Mrs. 

X is so grabby. She takes anything 

that's loose." 

" Oh, I say now, you don't mean " 

123 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



" Yes, I do," said the Missouri girl, with 
a look of ineffable joy. " She's got four 
already." 

It seemed impossible to get rid of that 
reporter. The trunks came down and the 
bus was waiting. Still he poured marvel- 
ous information into his notebook, stop- 
ping its flow at intervals to hark back to 
the original mystery. As we drove off 
and the Iowa school-teacher bade him 
farewell, looking at him so fondly that he 
cringed with fear and looked about for 
protection, he called after her despair- 
ingly : " But I say : You haven't told 
me yet. What IS a Fluffy Ruffles?" 

" I hope we can get the London news- 
paper in Amsterdam," said the school- 
teacher calmly. " He ought to write a 
good story. He was such an earnest 
young man." 



124 



CHAPTER V 

ON THE CONTINENT 

THERE is only one time to the 
average American tourist when 
England seems close to the 
United States. That is when he has left 
England and has arrived for the first time 
in a land where the most perfect Ainerican 
conversation, with all the baseball terms 
and short-cuts weeded out of it, is as use- 
less as ancient Cherokee. 

When I landed, after eight days on the 
unstable and monotonous foundation 
afforded the Cambodia by the Atlantic 
Ocean, England was inconceivably far 
away from home. But ten days later, 
when I stood, with the twenty-four Prairie 
Roses in my charge — winners of a Middle- 
West newspaper circulation contest — and 

I2S 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



our young Himalaya of baggage, on the 
stone dock at Antwerp, and suddenly 
realized that for the next four weeks I 
should have to talk with my hands and 
feet, my tongue being perfectly useless 
except for the discussion of strange and 
intricate food, London felt thousands of 
miles away — in the dooryard of home. 

,We were in a foreign land at last. The 
girls clung together in a subdued puddle 
of loneHness and I watched Paradoni, the 
conductor who met us at Glasgow, with 
awe m my soul for the first time. He v/as 
superintending the loading of the bag- 
gage, and the man was a volcano of 
language. He used French as a basic 
attack, with large numbers of ten-syllabled 
German shells and a shrapnel bombard- 
ment of Flemish, dropping into ItaHan for 
breath at intervals. He was a wonder. 
I congratulated him timidly as we drove 
off, but he merely laughed as he mopped 
his forehead. 

126 



ON THE CONTINENT 






Pouf! It is nothing," he said easily. 

You should come to Turkey with me 
some time. Often I have to use nine 
languages to get a compartment re- 
served." 

And there I was with only one language, 
not counting baseball, in a land where it 
took four men to do anything — one to 
work and three to carry on the vocal 
exercises. 

Luncheon was not very difficult either. 
They used the elective system in feeding 
us, but the choice was not very large. 
We could have *' potage " or " bouillon," 
but the rest of the courses were compul- 
sory. However, after lunch a frightful 
crisis arose: The girls suddenly dis- 
covered that they not only had no tongues 
but no money — nothing but a lot of metal 
with English designs stamped on it, at the 
sight of which the shopkeepers held up 
both hands and made uncouth noises in- 
dicating severe pain. 

127 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



Now this was a much more serious situ- 
ation than would appear on its face. It 
didn't have to do with trifles like railroad 
fare and hotel bills and carriage fare and 
admissions to churches, cemeteries, art 
galleries and museums. All this had been 
paid in advance. It concerned souvenir 
cards, which weren't included in the ex- 
penses but had been the chief end of 
woman, as far as this party was concerned, 
ever since we left home. Ten minutes for 
a cathedral and fifteen minutes for sou- 
venir cards had been the regular order. 

We had left deep holes in the card 
stocks all over England. We had 
abandoned a trip to Anne Hathaway's 
cottage because there wasn't time to see 
the cottage and buy cards of it too. 

Little Miss R— — slept on trains and in 
hotels because she spent her nights 
writing souvenir cards to the thousand 
people who had given her subscriptions to 
her paper. And while our young English 

128 



ON THE CONTINENT 



guide was proudly showing off the 
mummy of Rameses in the British 

Museum, Miss O practically ruined 

him for further use — the guide, not the 
mummy — by asking, in the midst of the 
solemn hush which the sight of death four 
thousand years removed was producing, 
where souvenir cards of the deceased 
might be obtained. 

Here we were in Antwerp with several 
quarts of English money which couldn't 
talk any better than we could, and train- 
time approaching. Paradoni was busy 
persuading three excited porters that the 
rest of the suitcases could be balanced on 
the omnibuses, and outtalking the three- 
and-a-few passers-by into the bargain. I 
had to meet the emergency. Hauling out 
an English sovereign I ran into the hotel. 
" Change — money — kopecks — dinero — 
Bitte bust this up, sill vous plait, and for 
heaven's sake give me some cash — gro- 

schen — chicken feed — francs " 

129 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



V. 



At the word " franc " the proprietor's 
eyes lighted with relief and the two or 
three minions who had ranged themselves 
behind me quietly, ready to take me away 
if I became more violently demented, went 
about their work. I got a quart or two of 
fragments for the sovereign, and we 
caught the train by no margin at all. It 
was a narrow escape. We might have 
had to stay there for days waiting for 
cards if I hadn't been such a linguist. 

For several days past young men had 
begun to appear mysteriously about our 
party. They had been passengers on the 
Cambodia, and they had all, at one time or 
another, walked a few hundred laps 
around the deck with the beautiful Miss 

S . When we arrived at Brussels 

there were three of them waiting — the 
Princeton boy, the Harvard boy and the 
red-headed young man from Omaha. 

Miss S— — was generous. She picked 
out the Princeton boy for her personal use 

130 



ON THE CONTINENT 



and loaned the other two to the party. 
They were bright young men and anxious 
to please, and you never saw any one 
appreciate them as those girls did. For 
three weeks they had been doing their own 
picking up and finding, so now for two 
days they gave themselves up to pleasure, 
paving picture-gallery floors with hand- 
kerchiefs, leaving umbrellas in windrows 
along the streets, and forgetting a carload 
of articles at the hotel regularly at the 
beginning of every trip. 

Brussels, fatherland of half the carpets 
in America and of forty-two acres of 
Rubens pictures, was delightful in its trim 
quaintness. We toured it in two large 
open hacks, letting no guilty picture 
gallery or palace escape. It was all very 
interesting, but there was a lack of en- 
thusiasm on the part of the girls. They 
went through the wonders dutifully 
enough, but there was a far-away look in 
their eyes as if they were looking forward 

131 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



to better things. We finished the town 
at 4:30 on the first afternoon, and as we 

drove up to the hotel Miss B hopped 

down with a reHeved sigh. 

" Is that all there is to see? " she asked 
our guide. 

" Ye-es, mademoiselle, oonless '' 

"All right, then. Come on, girls. 
We've got just one day and an hour left 
to buy laces in." 

All the next day they bought laces. I 
do not know how they did it for there 
wasn't enough French among the crowd 
to stop a cab. But they bought laces for 
themselves, for relatives and, I suspect, for 
Christmas presents to father. I met four 
of the girls late in the second afternoon in 
a narrow street which from its writhings 
was apparently a great sufferer. They 
were hunting for the hotel in a casual way 
with no success whatever, and, while they 
were not worried, they were glad to see 
me and to accept me as a guide. 

132 



ON THE CONTINENT 



I myself was glad to guide them, be- 
cause I had left the hotel not more than 
two minutes ago, just around the corner 
and across the little square in front of the 
Hotel de Ville. I had explored Brussels 
a good deal that day and was well quaHfied 
as a guide. 

So I turned the party around and in less 
than half a block we came to a broad and 
cheerful street which said, as plainly as 
any human could have spoken : " Here I 
am. Follow me and you will be home in 
no time." 

We were charmed by the invitation and 
did so. Presently the street faded out, 
but not until I had discovered a smaller 
street leading from it which I remembered 
perfectly, because it made a sharp turn to 
the left. 

So we went happily down this street ex- 
pecting to collide with the hotel at any 
minute, and, after stealthily leading us 
around a second corner, the street bra- 

133 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



zenly curved the wrong way^ and started 
up a hill. 

i was very much disgusted. But now 
a street to the left won our confidence. 
It was a frank and open vista, with the 
look of a street which intends to do its 
best. We squeezed into it past a wagon 
drawn by a horse as large as a hippopota- 
mus, and presently we came to a corner. 
We turned this hopefully, two more 
wrathfully, and five more desperately. 
Then, having run out of corners, the 
street bumped us up against a row of 
houses at least five hundred years old, and 
went out of business without further 
warning. 

I tried to laugh merrily, but it was a 
hollow business because I was mad. My 
blood was up. No undersized Brussels 
street could trifle with a freeborn Ameri- 
can. I left the girls looking at a silver- 
smith's window and ran back to the street 
which had attempted to lure us up the hill. 

134 



ON THE CONTINENT 



I ascended that hill and looked carefully 
for the Hotel de Ville. Sure enough there 
it was almost at my very feet. I hurried 
down the hill and into the little street I 
had left. I went around two corners 
which I hadn't remembered, down a flight 
of steps, through a doorway and landed 
in a courtyard among a hundred dirty 
children. 

That's what a Brussels street does for 
a confiding stranger. I had not only lost 
the hotel but I had mislaid the girls. I 
spent an hour hunting for them, and, ac- 
cording to the map which I studied that 
evening, I must have walked around the 
Hotel de Ville fivt times. In the end I 
gave up and asked directions of a citizen. 
I said: " Oo ay lee hotel Grande." The 
effect was that of uncorking a large 
hydrant. He was still shouting French 
enthusiastically when I ran for my life. 

Later I walked into a hotel in despera- 
tion to get a guide, and discovered that it 

135 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



was our hotel. I had been cruising 
around it for some time, it seems, and had 
entered it from a side door. The girls had 
been there for quite a while, having walked 
about until it came past. 

In the morning we went to Amsterdam 
and lodged in a spotless little hotel which 
had double doors to the rooms and a polite 
sign requesting the guest to hang the key 
on a nail outside the room when he had 
finished locking up. It also had a vocifer- 
ous and resounding staff, which used 
enough high-pressure conversation early 
in the morning to fit out a fair-sized riot 
in America. But it fed us well, and the 
proprietor was kind enough to take a large 
amount of French money, which had lost 
its potency when we crossed the border, 
and give us " gulden " for it in exchange. 

Nothing is more terrifying than a 
guilder. It is a harmless-looking piece of 
money worth forty cents, but it splits into 
a hundred " g;roschen '', which is a most 

136 



ON THE CONTINENT 



heartless thing to do. It took half an 
hour's work with a pencil to figure out the 
remainder of a guilder minus a postage 
stamp. It was pathetic to see the girls 
pouring '' gulden " out to the souvenir- 
card dealers and looking at the double 
handful of change with the troubled air 
of knowing that it was worth somewhere 
between four dollars and five cents. 

'' I hate 'em/' said Miss O viciously, 

as she looked around the Amsterdam 
station for something to buy with her last 
guilder. ^' I don't mind 'em when they're 
whole, but they do explode into such re- 
markable remains ! " 

It was in Amsterdam that we really 
began to buckle down to the trip. We 
had started from Glasgow almost casually, 
squandering ten days on England and 
Scotland. We had idled away forty-eight 
hours in Brussels. But now the schedule 
began to tighten up. We had two days 
for Holland — two days in which to see a 

137 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



sufficiency of wooden shoes, windmills, 
obese canal boats, tall, slim, infirm old 
houses standing knee deep in the water- 
ways, costumes which had stepped out of 
the books of childhood — all this in addi- 
tion to the regular run of picture galleries 
and palaces. 

My memory at this point blurs a little. 
I don't seem to see Holland at all, but a 
confused stream of young women climb- 
ing steadily in and out of carr3^alls, barges, 
motor boats, street cars and carriages; of 

Miss K emerging from her Baedeker 

with a gasp, to clutch some new sight and 
plunge below again to verify it; of the 

conscientious and inquisitive Miss D 

halting the party while the guide straight- 
ens in her methodical mind the directions 
in which the main canals of Amsterdam 

run; of Miss O balking at the fourth 

palace and seated on the front steps while 
we were within, eating fruit, to the scandal 

of the guards ; and of the Misses B and 

138 



ON THE CONTINENT 



E appearing on the distant horizon 

shortly after we were ready to start for 
somewhere else, two minutes late. 

This last sight is very clear in my mind. 
It happened with great regularity. We 
would climb hastily into the particular 
conveyance which was transporting us at 
the time, and Paradoni, checking us off 
watch in hand, would come out two shy. 
Then we would wait, some of us resign- 
edly, Mrs. X — — vociferously, Miss 

O sarcastically, and Paradoni with 

his marvelous patent smile, while the two 
young ladies slowly drifted in from the 
most unlikely places — a shoe-shining 
parlor, a grocery store, the royal stables or 
a private home which had not been ade- 
quately guarded. Then they would climb 
aloft with pleasant nods, as if to say: 
" There ! You may go now." 

Time after time Paradoni performed 
miracles in their behalf. He held the re- 
turn boat from Marken against the com- 

139 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



bined vocabularies of the captain, mate 
and engineer. He held the train from The 
Hague two minutes. It was a proud and 
happy two minutes for them, too, and 
they made the most of it, walking with 
great dignity and refusing to budge out 
of first speed. I think they kept track of 
the occasions when the world waited for 
them, and that their ultimate ambition 
was to delay the steamer on the return 
trip. 

Paradoni preserved his reenforced- 
concrete temper through it, but I could 
see the man age and wrinkle under the 
strain. It soothed my mean spirit, and I 
was glad. 

We left Amsterdam in the cool of the 
morning, and slid for an hour through a 
country where windmills, sailboats, tall 
brick houses and red cows jostled each 
other incongruously, and then passed, 
with solemn ceremonies, into a wonderful 
land where the stones along the right of 

140 



ON THE CONTINENT 



way were artistically piled, where crossing 
flagmen stood at attention when we 
passed, where the dust clouds rolled in 
regular order and turned square corners 
down the fields — and where the station 
platforms were congested with " schnell- 
zug-generallen,'' " bahnhof capitans " and 
" baggage herren." 

Now the cars were larger, but even then 
they couldn't hold all the " Verbotens." 
Huge lists of extra ones were posted at 
the stations. Large, new, red-brick 
towns sprang briskly into view, stood 
stiffly at attention, and glided to the rear 
in perfect order. Porters, conductors and 
supertrain boys came in with a click and 
disappeared with a salute. The " Guten 
Morgens " were a guttural command. 
The morning had received orders to be 
good. It was Prussia, the land where 
even the wind proceeds under dispatcher's 
directions; and when, comparing my watch 
with the time table, I found that the train 

141 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



was half an hour late, I unhesitatingly 
corrected my watch. It was a mere 
American watch, and what did it know of 
accuracy and order? 

All day till late afternoon we traveled 
through North Prussia — timidly, almost 
apologetically. The train was a fine one 
— much finer than we had found in Eng- 
land. The dinner was very good and the 
conveniences in the way of drinkables 
were simply superb. We could have any- 
thing produced in the wide world except 
water. Perhaps all the order and snap 
and efiiciency and general cocksureness 
grated a little on my nerves. At any rate 
it aroused a feeling of hostility, and just to 
be disagreeable I retained Paradoni for an 
interpreter, and, laying hold of one of the 
cloud of waiters forever passing through 
the train, I demanded, in magnificent 
tones, water — ice water — for the entire 
company, regardless of expense. 

It was a dastardly trick, and the Ger- 

142 



ON THE CONTINENT 



man railway service staggered under the 
blow. For the next half hour dusty Ger- 
mans roared, unserved, v^hile the staff dis- 
cussed the crisis agitatedly in the corridor. 
Waiter after waiter came hopefully in to 
have the order repeated on a chance that 
the remarkable " Herr '' might have 
thought better of it. Even the conductor 
looked into my compartment sharply, 
doubtless in the hope that I was violating 
some law which would give him grounds 
for forcing a compromise. 

But, no! I was disgustingly regular. 
My baggage was in the rack. My feet 
were in their place. My head was not out 
of the window. I was not smoking in a 
ladies' compartment. He gave it up, and 
those noble waiters, martyrs to their 
passion for accommodation, got the water. 
I think they telegraphed ahead for it and 
borrowed it from some museum. 

In Berlin we spent five days and were 
timid and abashed, once more having 

143 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



another new language to misunderstand 
and another set of signs and warnings to 
puzzle out. With moans of despair the 

girls cast themselves upon Miss J . 

Miss J was a quiet little girl who had 

averaged two remarks a day in England, 
Belgium and Holland, but suddenly in the 
Berlin railway station she had seized an 
official with a firm hand and had addressed 
him in thirty yards of pure German — the 
family tongue in her St. Louis home. 
Thereupon she changed from an unnoticed 
fraction of the party to a leader and a firm 
rock in every storm. She got directions 
from policemen, bargained with shop- 
women, did the quarreling for all of the 
party with the chambermaids at the hotel, 
and became banker for the crowd. It was 
touching to see the confidence with which 
the girls crowded about her. 

I speak, of course, of the first day. 
Nothing seemed to daunt the girls for 
more than a day. By the next afternoon 

144 



ON THE CONTINENT 



they were shopping with great success, 
now and then dashing back to the hotel, 
with dazed clerks in their wakes, to con- 
sult Miss J on the difficult subject of 

crowns and thalers. 

It was amazing to see how quickly they 
became at ease in this great and reverber- 
ating land. They even picked up the 
language itself after the first day and did 
remarkable things with it. When we 

entered Germany Mrs. X -, Hke most of 

the rest of the party, knew no German 
whatever. Yet on the second evening 
when the girls took up the thrice-daily 
job of getting butter and water for their 

tables, Mrs. X turned to her waiter 

and addressed him, with a perfect accent, 
as follows: 

" Looken sie here, young man: Booter 
und wasser, kalt, sehr kalt mit ice; and get 
a wiggle on you before I call up the 
American consul.'' 

The proprietor himself did her the 

145 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



honor of translating this when the young 
man had fled to his protection. 

Most of our time in Berlin we rode 
about the city in a huge automobile 
amphitheater in charge of a local guide, 
who strained his small English vocabulary 
all out of shape trying to do justice to his 
city. He was not a boastful guide — only 
Americans are boastful, we are told by all 
Europeans. He was simply dogmatic. 
He stated facts in a manner which would 
have made argument a misdemeanor at 
least: 

" Attenshon ! Fr-r-riedrichstrasse, gr-r- 
readest strasse fur business in die vor-r- 
rldt. Now, ladies und herren, ist Unter 
den Linden, gr-r-readest boulevardt in die 
vor-r-rldt. Der Tiergarten — gr-r-readest 
park in die vor-r-rldt. Attenshon! Gr- 
r-readest sight in die vor-r-ldt! Fier 
r-railroaden dracks, von uber der other. 
Noddings lige it nowhere — nowhere, ver- 
stehen! Ach nun kommen wir par-r-rade 

146 



ON THE CONTINENT 



groundt! E-normous! Zehn miles long, 
yah! Ganz recht. Gr-r-readest in die 
vor-r-rldt ! Charlottenburg now ist. Soo- 
burb ! Booteful — noddings like it in your 
goundree. Finest in die vor-r-rldt ! Vort- 
heim's! Gr-r-readest store. You haf 
never like it anything gesehn, nein. Five 
stories — elevatoren — gr-r-readest in die 
ganz vor-r-rldt." 

All this was especially hard for Miss 

O to endure. Coming from Chicago, 

where in the last few years they have made 
rather a specialty of size themselves, she 
restrained herself with difficulty. But 
when she looked at Berlin's only depart- 
ment store, its pride and joy, and heard it 
called the greatest in the world, she broke 
loose from her moorings altogether. It 
was a personal insult. She leaned over 
and caught the guide firmly by the elbow. 

" Say, my friend, you ought to see a real 
store,'' she snorted. " You call this coop 
a big store ! Rats ! In Chicago we've got 

147 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



stores where they run automobiles like 
this in the aisles." 

We left Berlin in the cool of the morn- 
ing one day and went to Cologne, where 
four young men whom we had met on the 
steamer were very much surprised to see 
us and immediately offered to show Miss 

S the sights. Our only duty in 

Cologne consisted of the Cathedral, so 
after we had walked through it with our 
heads well back on our shoulders, and had 
inspected the sacristy with its dingy old 
vestments, and had walked around the 
vast and soaring handmade cliff from the 
outside, the three young men, who hadn't 

found Miss S ~ soon enough, took the 

rest of the party out to dinner and I went 
over to the hotel alone. 

I ate a solitary meal and went up to my 
room to write a letter. As I passed 
through a long hall Paradoni came out of 
a room with his hands full of towels, soap 
dishes, napkin rings and other little hotel 

148 



ON THE CONTINENT 



articles which usually elope with a guest 
unless closely watched. 

I was not interested, but he gave a great 
start when he saw me and beckoned me 
hastily into his room farther down the 
hall. '' You will, I hope, not speak of this 
you have seen? " he asked anxiously. 

'' Certainly not," I said accommodat- 
ingly. " What is the idea? " 

" The idea " — he spoke very bitterly — 
" it is that I am robbing the young ladies' 
room. It is a new duty,'' he went on. " I 
have never had it before. The Misses 

B and E , they are what you call 

souvenir fiends. They rob the hotel. 
The young ladies have spoons from Lon- 
don, saltcellars from Brussels, a sofa 
cushion from Amsterdam. Always they 
get out of the country the next day safe. 
But from Berlin they take many things. 
It is a joke in your country. In Berlin 
they have no humor. They have tele- 
graphed to the police here. So I make 

149 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



myself a thief and send the things back." 
He shrugged his shoulders wearily. 

On the next day we took passage on a 
swift, narrow steamer, with capacity for 
three hundred passengers and twenty-four 
thousand bottles of refreshments, and 
steamed for twelve golden hours up the 
Rhine, past a thousand vineclad hills at 
whose feet factories smoked and electric 
trains buzzed, and on whose summits 
stood grim and blackened castle towers 
extinct as old skyrocket shells — relics of 
the brave, bad days when robber barons 
ruled the land and took what they wanted 
from the stranger without even the for- 
mality of running a tourist hotel. It was a 
glorious trip without a cloud in it. The 
boat was crowded with tourists, most of 
whom were from America. 

We spent the next day placidly at 
Heidelberg, viewing the celebrated ruin 
and waiting for the evening, when it was 
to be illuminated with red fire. Three of 

ISO 



ON THE CONTINENT 



the boys on the steamer had chanced to 
turn up again, which annoyed me because 
of the absurd confidence which the girls 
had in them. Whereas they wouldn't 
trust me to mail a souvenir card since our 
adventures in Warwick, they followed 
these young men with blind faith to candy 
stores and restaurants and other places 
which I should have been glad to show 
them, if I hadn't fed them so heartily on 
the way to New York. It was irritating, 
because these boys had no experience as 
conductors. They couldn't have brought 
the party across the ocean to save them. 
They would have swum to shore if they 
had been confronted with the responsibil- 
ity. Yet here was I, a scarred veteran of 
the conducting business, discredited, 
while the young women accepted offhand 
information on trains and street cars from 
these youngsters and went off rowing with 

such of them as Miss S was not using. 

I thought of it that night while we stood 

151 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



on the stone bridge over the river waiting 
for the illumination. All the town was 
there and things were very crowded. It 
was tiresome waiting. After an hour 
many of the girls began to murmur and 
repine. At a crisis like this a man with 
resource and originality might make him- 
self valuable. I looked around to provide 
a proof of the originality and discovered a 
little restaurant. This was my chance ! 

I escorted five of the weariest girls to 
this retreat and fed them chocolate. They 
hesitated and were afraid they would miss 
the show, but I laughed at this, for with the 
first excited " Ah ! " of the multitude we 
could step out, refreshed, and see the 
whole thing. So we sat and rested, and 
after half an hour I became quite trium- 
phant. We were warmed and fed and 
rested while the rest of Heidelberg was 
still waiting for some imposing official to 
touch off the illuminations. 

Presently the restaurant filled up tight, 

152 



ON THE CONTINENT 



and when we went outside to see what had 
caused the rush we discovered the last, 
faint, dying glow of the illumination. The 
whole thing had come off while we were 
waiting, and out of the ten thousand 
Teutons present not one had peeped. 
They had drunk in the show in silence and 
we had missed the whole business. 

I was very indignant and tried to blame 
it on the government, but the girls sug- 
gested that I take the blame. In fact they 
insisted on it. They said I had a reassur- 
ing air while blundering which was as per- 
suasive as a club, and that I ought to take 
something for it. 

From Heidelberg we traveled success- 
fully to Frankfort and there saw, with no 
complications whatever, the home of 
Goethe, the original lair of the Roths- 
childs, the Jewish quarter and timbered 
houses with their beautifully carved and 
painted fronts, and an art gallery which 
was one of the frankest a modest Ameri- 

153 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



can party ever wished itself out of — every- 
thing of interest, in fact, but the sausages 
which have made Frankfort so justly fa- 
mous in many quarters of America. When 
we loaded ourselves in the hack for the 
train Paradoni came and sat with me on 
the driver's seat. He was very cheerful. 
Another twenty-four hours would see us 
in Switzerland, where they have regula- 
tions, too, but not such obtrusive and 
sacred ones; and where hotelkeepers can 
take care of themselves, and then some, 
without calling in the government to 
assist. He mentioned this in grateful 
tones and then, out of sheer relief, he took 
up his permanent subject of the supe- 
riority of Europe. 

There was something naive and child- 
like about the modesty with which Para- 
doni discussed Europe. He disapproved 
of France, despised Germany, laughed at 
England and criticized his own land 
frankly. But when he discussed America, 

154 



ON THE CONTINENT 



which he did for matter of comparison 
some fifteen times a day, he lumped all 
Europe together and worshiped it. Its 
worst imperfections were intellectual 
triumphs beside America's best. Not 
that he disliked our country — oh, no! 
He felt as kindly toward America as a 
charitable old college professor might feel 
toward an ignorant small boy who was 
trying to conquer the alphabet. 

I had in times past believed that Ameri- 
cans were perhaps a Httle inclined to brag. 
But after I had listened for a month to 
Paradoni discussing the wisdom of Euro- 
peans, the cleverness of Europeans, the art 
of Europeans, the phenomenal neatness of 
Europeans, the transcendent statecraft of 
Europeans, the miraculous practicality of 
Europeans and the impenetrable capa- 
biHty of Europeans, I changed my mind 
about America. It is a slow nation and 
doesn't know the first principles of brag- 
ging. I was so impressed from our first 

155 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



day with Paradoni that I didn't even at- 
tempt to discuss America at all. It takes 
a lifetime of painful practice in self-esteem 
to bring an American to the point where 
he can cope with the granite-ballasted 
satisfaction of the Continental. 

On this particular day Paradoni talked 
about railroads. " I shall show you to- 
day/' he said, '* a car such as you have 
never dreamed of in America. It is 
beyond you. You have not thought that 
far yet. Such luxury — such convenience 
— such ingenuity — ah, you shall see ! We 
shall travel in it. I have secured it for 
the party. You do not yet know what 
railroad traveling is in America. I have 
traveled on your lines. So late, all the 
time. You see how it has been in Ger- 
many. Always on time. No trouble. 
All system and good order. In Germany 
every man knows his work. It is by law. 
You Americans should study system — in 

this country " 

156 



ON THE CONTINENT 



And so on and with maddening com- 
placency while I ground off my teeth and 
kept still out of pure stubbornness. 

We arrived at the station and were care- 
fully tucked away in our special car. I 
must admit it was a wonderful car. It 
had great plate-glass windows which dis- 
appeared downward at a touch and came 
up as easily. It had comfortable little 
four-seat compartments and a great open 
room with wonderfully upholstered di- 
vans down the middle, and chairs and 
cushions in the corners. It even had a 
cool-water tank — an innovation which 
must have staggered all Europe when it 
was tried out. 

We arranged ourselves about the car 
with a great deal of satisfaction. But it 
did not last. In a minute an official 
hurried in and ordered us out. There was 
no argument about it. It was ^' Heraus ! " 
And out we went, our baggage going out 
of the window in a stream as we departed. 

157 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



Paradoni, who had been in the station, 
came up at that moment and exploded into 
high German, low German and Dutch 
with Italian trimmings. No result. The 
Herr head usher was very apologetic but 
powerless. It was the engineer who was 
to blame. He was a tyrant, that engineer. 
He would haul only so many cars. If he 
was late he was responsible, and he took 
no chances. It was too bad, but nobody 
could influence the engineer. He was a 
principality in himself. Would we please 
take first-class compartments in the regu- 
lar train? 

We did so with much pain. But here a 
worse complication arose: The Herr 
conductor arrived and he was not pleased. 
He was king, emperor and sole authority 
on board that train behind the engine and 
he wanted no third-class tickets in his 
first-class coaches. Out we went, faster 
than we had come in, and at that minute, 
with confusion supreme on the platform, 

158 



ON THE CONTINENT 



the station master, who was emperor of all 
he surveyed and responsible only to the 
Kaiser, arrived and jumped joyfully into 
the fracas. 

Back we went into our private car with 
desperate haste, urged on by uncouth 
cries. But here a new complication 
arose — the Herr yardmaster, who had sole 
control of couplings and switches, sided 
in with the Herr engineer. Suddenly the 
train was cut, and our car was jerked 
hastily out of the station and set on a side 
track. Then the triumphant engineer 
backed down to his train, coupled on again 
and gave a cheerful toot indicating that he 
was ready to proceed. 

Shrieks and cries arose from the aban- 
doned car. Paradoni, who had remained 
to wrestle with the conductor, gave up. 
"What shall I do? " he cried despairingly 
as I reached him. " They will go without 
us." 



a 



Oh, no, they^ won't," I said comfort- 
159 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



ably, in my American ignorance. That 
was all I knew about it. The station 
master's watch was in his hand. Sud- 
denly he gave the signal. Leaving time 
had come. A whole carload of passengers 
would be left, but that did not alter the 
ironclad rule. The train must leave on 
time. We had been caught between the 
cogs of the wonderful unmatchable Ger- 
man system. 

The conductor blew his whistle. But 
the train did not start. The laws, by-laws 
and constitution of the Empire bade it 

start, but Mrs. X , a not too frail 

American lady, objected. Single-handed 
and alone she blocked the German nation 
and threw a brick into its inexorable sys- 
tem. While our girls were running 
shriekfuUy for the train, crossing track 
after track in-defiance of all laws, she sat 
calmly down on the track in front of the 
engine. 

We reached her half a minute later. A 

i6o 



ON THE CONTINENT 



foaming engineer was conversing with 
her and she was replying comfortably: 

" I don't understand a word you say. 
Don't waste your breath, young man. 
Here I sit until every girl and every suit- 
case is on board, and don't you forget it! " 

It was an inspiring scene. It even in- 
spired Paradoni with the sacred fire of in- 
dependence, and he lit into the station 
master and conductor and engineer with 
such unnatural fury that they were some- 
what abashed and didn't even hand Mrs. 

X over for execution. When the last 

girl and suitcase were on board we helped 
her to her feet and she walked with dignity 
down to a coach. She turned as she 
reached the step and glared at Paradoni. 

"There!" she said coldly. "Don't let 
me hear any more about system. What 
these folks need is less system and more 
sense." 

Then we rolled happily off to Switzer- 
land, and while Paradoni sat silently in the 

i6i 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



smoking compartment I spoke to him at 
length about railroads in America, govern- 
ment in America, climate in America, 
engineers in America, and many other im- 
portant subjects which had been previ- 
ously overlooked. And I spoke without 
interruption. 



162 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FINISH 

SWITZERLAND is a perpendicular 
republic which extends backward 
to the twelfth century and upward 
so high that Paradise can sometimes be 
obtained by a single careless step. Its 
only natural resource is mountains and its 
greatest output is scenery. This is the 
impression which one gets of Switzerland 
from song, story and the picture books. 
And in our case the country began making 
good at the frontier. We had seen the 
Rhine in Germany — a peaceful, useful, 
orderly stream, run under double tracks 
and block signals and broke to the coal- 
boat traffic at all points. Our first sight 
of it in Switzerland was at Schaffhausen 
on the border. It was the Swiss Rhine 

163 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



there and it was performing in a character- 
istically Swiss manner by falling over a 
precipice one hundred feet high. 

Our hotel faced the falls*a short distance 
down the river and we watched them until 
dark, entranced by their beauty and only 
mentioning Niagara now and then from 
a sense of duty. In their natural, un- 
adorned state they would be entirely satis- 
factory to the populace anywhere but in 
Europe. But the Europeans have a 
passion for embellishment and decoration, 
so each night during the tourist season the 
Falls of the Rhine are illuminated by red 
fire. 

This was a weird and impressive spec- 
tacle. The flying mists caught the crim- 
son glare and turned it into tossing gossa- 
mers of fire which soared high above the 
falls, while the caverns beneath were 
seething caldrons of flame. It was a very 
thoughtful contribution to the enjoyment 
of the pilgrim and stranger. They un- 

164 



THE FINISH 



doubtedly do some things better in 
Europe. No one ever thinks of burning 
red fire in the bottom of the Grand Canon 
or shooting off Roman candles from 
Pike's Peak to add to the enjoyment of the 
traveling public. 

The next morning I noticed tourist after 
tourist roaring lustily about his bill and 
discovered that each guest had been 
assessed one franc as his share of the 
illumination expenses. Even a Swiss 
hotel couldn't very well charge extra for 
a plain waterfall, so these thrifty people 
touched it up a little with about a dollar's 
worth of red fire and collected twenty-five 
dollars a day from the spectators. 

From Schaffhausen we set out for the 
Rigi. In the afternoon we had to transfer 
from the regular railroad to the me- 
chanical goat which climbs the Rigi, and 
walk a matter of a hundred yards or more 
over a small bridge. For the first time 
since we entered Europe there were no 

i6s 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



porters about to leap for the hand bag- 
gage. 

This was an interesting emergency. 
The docility of our baggage had become 
a marvel to me. It had followed us with 
all the perseverance of a hound pup ever 
since we had left the boat. I had not 
touched my suitcase for two weeks except 
to open it in the hotel. It came and went 
with total strangers, finding its way about 
foreign countries in an almost human 
manner. I had faith in it in this emer- 
gency and left it on the platform for some 
minutes, expecting to see it follow me. 
But it didn't. Eventually I had to carry 
it myself — under my arm, because the 
handle had disappeared. Nothing is so 
wearing on the constitution of a suitcase 
as constant association with a porter. 

The Rigi is a noble pile of rock upward 
of a mile high. It overlooks Lake Lucerne 
on one side, and a tremendous upper 
region of bluish-white snow fields perched 

i66 



THE FINISH 



dizzily just abaft the zenith on the other 
side. In these snow fields, punctured 
with sharp and ragged peaks, the sun is 
accustomed to set — which lowers one's 
opinion of its common sense, for a colder, 
stickier, more utterly desolate nest one 
cannot find on earth. Not even a Plym- 
outh Rock hen with a maternal urge 
would use it. 

Perched aloft in their inaccessible lone- 
liness, seemingly divorced from the planet 
itself, these fields of never-melting snow 
are chillier than the graduate of a varnish- 
ing school in the presence of a social in- 
ferior. But when the sun's last rays touch 
them they flush and grow rosy and warm, 
and they glow and sparkle like the same 
young lady under the gaze of a brand-new 
West Point graduate. This has made the 
everlasting fortune of Mount Rigi. It is 
only a little bush-league mountain, but as 
an amphitheater from which to view the 
big show it is unsurpassed. And each year 

167 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 

thousands of tourists climb to its top and 
sleep in its big hotel. 

The sunset was not working properly on 
the evening of our visit to the Rigi, but 
after dinner we went out to the fence 
which kept the guests from walking off 
into another canton several thousand feet 
below and watched a large thunderstorm 
perform over the lake. It was the first 
time I had ever got a dorsal view of a 
thunderstorm. This one was only a small 
storm, but it made up in noise and activity 
for its size. It rushed from side to side 
of the valley, blotting out the twinkling 
villages below instead of the twinkling 
stars above, and finally by a quick flank 
movement it charged at us, poured over 
the brink like an inverted cataract and 
drove us pell-mell into the hotel, bombard- 
ing us with thunder claps as we ran. It 
was exciting and very unrestful, for the 
lightning kept cracking away on all sides.- 

I retired to my room hastily, the vapor 

i68 



THE FINISH 



chasing me up the corridor, locked the 
door just in front of it, and for ten minutes 
hunted for stray wisps under the bed and 
in the closet. One cannot be too careful 
about these matters. Of course only a 
very small portion of a thunderstorm can 
edge its way into a hotel room, but it may 
be the very part which contains the crash. 
.1 did not relish the idea of being awakened 
in the middle of the night by a prickly 
piece of thundercloud struggling to get 
out of the room. 

The Princeton and the Harvard boys 
and the red-headed boy from Omaha 
turned up at the hotel in the morning. 
They were greeted with regal kindness by 

the beautiful Miss S and with rapture 

by the rest of the girls. This was partly 
because they were nice boys anyway, and 
partly because, by lavishing refreshments, 
souvenir cards and candy about, they were 
helping to relieve a financial stringency 
which was becoming more alarming every 

169 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



minute. Each girl had brought with her 
a sum of money for incidentals, and had 
found that Europe consisted mostly of 
incidentals. The sums varied a good deal 
at first, but when a dozen cities had gone 
after the girls with their shop windows 
the cash balances had been shaken down 
pretty much to a level — said level being 
just enough to see the owner through with 
stringent economy. 

By the time we reached Switzerland the 
girls groaned with fright as they ap- 
proached each new town. Poor things! 
they weren't fitted by experience to hold 
out against those shop windows. Even a 
bakery shop was an object of alarm to 
most of them. They might get by it all 
right, and then again they might see some- 
thing in the window which would grab a 
mark from them before they could get out 
of the way. 

From the Rigi we descended by a train 
which had evidently got its early educa- 

170 



THE FINISH 



tion on a mansard roof, and took the 
steamer for Lucerne. It was a cold, wet, 
dark day. On each side of the lake and in 
front and behind, the vast flanks of the 
mountains sloped evenly down to the 
water while their tops and shoulders were 
hidden in the clouds which hung low over 
the lake. The effect was that of the 
Roman Colosseum magnified uncounted 
times and roofed over with an awning one 
hundred square miles in extent. 

All the people in the world could have 
found seats on those sloping sides, with 
room for the gentlemanly ushers to pass 
between them selling tickets for the con- 
cert; and I fell to wondering, between 
shivers, how long it would take to assemble 
the nations there in their places; and, after 
the last wonderfully dressed New York 
woman had hurried down Aisle No. 1253 
to seat 1,235,678, Row X — double prime, 
thus completing the audience, there would 
of course have to be a program, and I 

171 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



wondered what man on earth would have 
the supernatural gall and self-assurance to 
get up and occupy the time of those billion 
odd people with a few brief remarks of his 
own. 

Of course plenty of fools would do it — I 
knew several in our town who not only 
would accept the invitation with pleasure 
but would probably go around to the com- 
mittee on speakers and ask to be put on 
the program — but what great man could 
face that audience without dropping dead 
from a sense of his own unworthiness ? 
Of course William Tell performed in this 
very valley to several hundred million 
people. But it was more in the line of 
acrobatics and marksmanship and he had 
his audience in installments, so to speak, 
and did not realize at the time how large 
the attendance was going to be. 

Then it got still colder and wetter and 
I passed rapidly on in the realm of specu- 
lation, sliding slowly downhill, as one will 

172 



THE FINISH 



on a wet day with dinner overdue, and 
wondering how much worse my best suit 
would look by the time I got to Paris; 
and whether money from the various 
newspapers would be waiting for me there, 
and into just how minute particles my last 
two sovereigns could be divided in the 
next week, and whether the United States 
was still where we left it — but by that time 
we had arrived in Lucerne. I watched the 
Roses filing off the boat, and from many 
a tear-scarred cheek I judged that the 
weather had softened them up a bit and 
they had been speculating too. 

But climate never could stand out 
against hot soup, and by afternoon the 
party was warm and cheerful and ready 
for the day's duty, which was to see the 
Lion of Lucerne. There was a vast differ- 
ence of opinion over the lion. Miss K 

and Miss R had loved it passionately 

for years, and a number of the other girls 
were greatly impressed with its sad story. 

173 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



Miss O was not impressed, but she 

was interested. Was it caught near 
Lucerne? Was it an old lion? Was it 
famous because it was so large or did it 

do tricks? On the other hand, Mrs. X 

wasn't interested at all. She hadn't come 
all this distance, she declared, to go to a 
menagerie. She was going to improve 
her mind. So she set off to round up and 
inspect a cathedral, and in about ten 
minutes the rest of the party lined up 
silently before the lion. 

Couched in the eternal rock he lay there 

in his dying dignity, and even Miss O , 

when she got over her first disappoint- 
ment, admitted that he was the most 
pathetic and lovable lion she had ever 

seen. Miss K sniffed aloud and a 

hush of genuine admiration had settled 
over us all, when the red-headed boy, who 
had been driven by Miss S all morn- 
ing and had been then turned out to pas- 
ture, came hurrying up. 
) 174 



THE FINISH 



" What do you suppose, girls ? " he said 
loudly, not noticing the majestic scene 
which was afflicting the party. " IVe just 
found a place where they sell ice-cream 
soda " 

*' What ! " Twenty-three girls leaped 
upon him. 

"Where?" 

The next instant he had disappeared in 
a billow of excited young women. They 
were following him to the soda fountain. 
He held them in the hollow of his hand at 
that minute. He could have led them up 
the Jungfrau, over the glaciers; he could 
have made the Pied Piper look like a 
minority leader in Mississippi; but he was 
an honest young man and didn't take ad- 
vantage of his opportunity. He merely 
led the way to a restaurant around the 
corner, where a miserable little box of a 
fountain, about as modern as John Erics- 
son's monitor, was being operated by an 
old Swiss who was as afraid of it as if it 

175 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



were a Catling gun. He will probably 
talk of that afternoon's business as long as 
he lives. The girls consumed three 
glasses around, and some of them would 
have ordered more, but I objected, they 
not being hooped, like barrels, to with- 
stand a strain. 

Later the girls sang the " Star-Spangled 
Banner " and tottered out to see the rest 
of Lucerne. On the whole it would have 
been better if they had stayed beside the 
soda fountain drinking up the red-headed 
boy's money, for presently they got 
downtown and the carved-ivory displays, 
which had been waiting as the tiger waits 
for its prey, reached out and gathered 
them in. That night when they returned 
to the hotel the financial ruin of the party 
was complete. They had bought ivory 
roses, daisies, elephants, chalets made into 
hatpins, collar pins, cuff buttons, shoe- 
horns, earrings, thimbles, boxes, carving 
knives and forks, mousetraps, and jewel 

176 



THE FINISH 



cases. They were tempestuously happy 
and some of them also cried. If brigands 
had held up the whole bunch on the Bru- 
nig Pass the next day they couldn't have 
gathered in a gill of loose change. 

We spent the next day climbing pa- 
tiently over the backs and shoulders of 
Switzerland in trains which ran on two 
rails until the landscape slanted too ter- 
rifically — after which the engine produced 
a cogwheel from its interior somewhere 
and climbed placidly up the side of the 
mountains on a rack rail while we gazed 
fearfully down and tried hard to believe 
that the valleys below were as soft and 
yielding as they looked. 

It was a hard day for the party. They 
were on starvation rations of post-cards 
and suffered terribly at the large stations, 
where the assortment was bewildering. 
And then, just to emphasize the situation, 
we dropped over the other side of the pass, 
flirted with a steamer or two briefly, and 

177 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



landed at Interlaken, the heart of the 
carved-wood country. 

That evening two dozen girls walked 
the streets looking at shop windows. The 
scene was heartrending. Thousands of 
patient Swiss had carved their national 
forests into bears, deer, yodelers, chalets 
and barnyard stock, and were selling the 
same at prices slightly below that of cord- 
wood in New York City. But none of the 
party bought anything. They put their 
faces against the pane and looked like a 
small tattered boy in a Christmas story 
eating hot buns with his eyes — but that 
was the limit of their investment. Thev 
didn't buy even a cuckoo clock. Miss 

J had come all the way from St. Louis 

to buy a cuckoo clock, but the Brussels 
lacemakers had seen her first. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if the price 
of carved ivory hadn't come down fifty per 
cent between Lucerne and Interlaken. 
When the girls noticed this they wanted 

178 



THE FINISH 



to take the matter up to the United States 
consul, and became so mad and generally 
frazzled that they took the magnificent 
ride up the Grindelwald Valley without a 
word, and declined to regard the Jungfrau 
as anything more than a heap of snow out 
of season. 

We stopped for an hour at the Grindel- 
wald glacier and walked in among its ribs 
through a cave out of which issued a foam- 
ing, roaring stream of cloudy ice water. 

When Miss B saw this water she 

stooped down at its edge and drank a little 
with great difficulty. 

" Drink a lot of it, girls," she said as she 
took her face out of the stream. " It's the 
only luxury we can afford the rest of the 
trip." 

We drove back that afternoon through 
regiments of peasants offering for sale 
edelweiss, fruit, lemonade, carved wood 
and other necessities. It was depressing. 
They greeted us with such cheer and 

179 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



watched us pass with such grieved sur- 
prise. That night the Harvard boy 

bought Miss S a carved wooden bear, 

as large as a Newfoundland pup, and the 
Princeton boy happened in with a bale of 
assorted post-cards, which helped a little; 
but it was a gloomy party and general 
suspense was in command of the situation. 
We might find money waiting for us in 
Paris; and then again we might not. 
Most of the girls went to bed early to 
avoid thinking about the latter possibility. 
We left Interlaken the next morning 
and spent several hours in Bern. Bern is 
a large city, but we didn't see much of it 
because we had to go and see the bears. 
These bears are universally recommended 
to the tourist as being the unique sight of 
the city, because they stand on their hind 
legs and catch peanuts — and, moreover, 
have descended from generations of bears 
which have done the same. I have seen 
gentler and better-educated bears, but it 

i8o 



THE FINISH 



did me good to see these, because when- 
ever a European pokes fun at Chicago in 
my presence for hauling the visitor out to 
its great pig dissectories I mention to him 
the fact that Bern, the capital of Switzer- 
land, yanks the visitor hastily by its his- 
toric monuments and leads him out to 
marvel over a few moth-eaten menagerie 
remnants. No American city would have 
permitted this for an instant. A good, 
live, American commercial club secretary 
would have the bears chloroformed if 
necessary, and would install a crop and 
fruit exhibit and a real-estate office in the 
depot if necessary. That would not be 
much of an improvement, but it would 
help a little. 

That afternoon we reached Dijon, a 
busy French town congested with little 
red-legged soldiers. And from Dijon we 
traveled to Paris, more than one hundred 
and fifty miles away, in less than three 
hours. It was a wild trip. The light 

i8i 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



coach leaped and swayed. We ate a 
scrambled dinner in a dining car where 
most of the service was by centrifugal 
force. Through city and country, tunnels 
and fields we shrieked and rocked and 
roared, faster than I had ever traveled in 
reckless America. By nine o'clock we 
were in our Paris hotel and well into the 
job of being hoisted aloft by the elevator. 

I did not go aloft myself. I was too 
much tortured with suspense. I hurriedly 
secured my mail and retired to the writing 
room, where I opened the letters with 
breathless anxiety. There were several 
from the various papers, and out of them 
I collected a total of two hundred and 
sixty-five dollars in cash and something 
over one million dollars' worth of good 
advice about economy while traveling. 
We were, to some extent, saved. 

There was great rejoicing .in the morn- 
ing when the good news was spread. It 
was at this point that my inexperience 

182 



THE FINISH 



proved most disastrous. I divided the 
money into twenty-five equal parts and 
distributed it. 

We toured Paris all Biorning, and at 
lunch the girls seemed to be much hurried 
and disappeared without waiting for 
dessert. I did not go out. At five o'clock 
I noticed a foreign-looking hat, with a 
familiar figure under it, enter the reading 

room. It turned out to be Miss K . 

She had bought a Paris hat and she was so 
excited about it that she had to tell me all 
about it. She had bought it at Madame 
Pompom's all by hers^elf, by making signs, 
and it had cost her nine dollars. And 
could she please borrow another ten to 
get home on? 

I did not have time to answer her, be- 
cause just then the Misses B and 

E floated in under two of the sauciest 

creations ever worked off on the transient 
millinery trade and demanded my opinion 
of the same. While I was perjuring my- 

183 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



self Mrs. X came in, wearing a feather 

fountain with delirium trimmings. She 
was followed in the next hour by eighteen 
other girls who had gone out with the last 
ten dollars between them and New York 
and had met an affinity in the shape of a 
hat. 

I tried to be stern and unpleasant, but it 
was too late. The damage was done. 
Besides, those girls were so absurdly 
happy that no one without the feelings of 
a monster would have objected. They 
had dreamed of Paris hats all their lives 
as some inaccessible boon, and when they 
suddenly discovered that all Paris hats 
didn't cost two hundred dollars apiece, but 
the prices ranged from two dollars up, 
they didn't even try to resist. 

The girls went to Versailles and other 
places in the next two days and enjoyed 
themselves convulsively in their new hats, 
though by the second afternoon some of 
the creations began to molt, drop feathers 

184 



THE FINISH 



about and wither like a flower. I did not 
enjoy myself. I was raising money for 
the journey home. I had never claimed 
to be a financier, and if any one had asked 
me to go to Paris and raise a hundred 
dollars today I would have asked to be 
allowed to finance a railroad in America 
instead. 

But I got it done somehow. I got fifty 
dollars from the paper by cable, twenty- 
five dollars from the only acquaintance 
whom I could find in Paris, and the rest by 
holding a sacrifice sale of personal effects 
at a shop which gave evidence of having 
accommodated a lot of tourists in similar 
trouble at various times. I decided to 
hold on to this hundred dollars with all the 
strength left in a shattered physique, and 
only use it to pay the last scattering emer- 
gency expenses of the trip. 

History must record the siege of that 
hundred dollars among the decisive battles 
of peace. For the next two days I de- 
^ i8s 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



fended it against the shopkeepers of Paris 
with the desperation of a garrison in the 
last ditch. Having done the city in the 
first three days under Paradoni's care, the 
girls had nothing to do until the steamer 
sailed but look in the shop windows. 
More expensive amusements were out of 
the question except with the very thrifty 
few who still had money. They would 
look until they found a bargain which was 
as irresistible as gravity and then they 
would come to me and plead for just a 
little money. 

They were all perfectly solvent. Just 
across the Atlantic, only a few thousand 
miles away, they had bank accounts and 
parents and all sorts of lucrative resources. 
Why wouldn't I trust them? they asked 
with hurt looks. I was ruining their trip. 
I was a monster. Doubtless I had thou- 
sands of dollars hoarded away in my 
trunk. Why, a man of my honesty of 
countenance and general genius could go 

i86 



THE FINISH 



out in Paris and raise a hatful of money in 
ten minutes. 

So they went on, varying from despair 
to flattery, harassing me front and rear; 
but I continued cold as a marble statue in 
February, doling out only small sums for 
post-cards, carfare and other necessities of 
life. But on the evening of the fourth day 
the little Des Moines girl, who had believed 
everything told her on the trip except my 
financial statement, came to me in tears 
and confessed that she had forgotten to 
get a present for her brother, her only 
living relative — and that for the want of 
three dollars to buy a beautiful cigarette 
case she was going through the remainder 
of her life in darkness. I was so touched 
that I advanced the money. Every gen- 
eral makes some great tactical blunder at 
the critical moment. From that time on I 
had more sympathy with Napoleon at 
Waterloo. Those girls seemed to have no 
secrets from each other. They also 

187 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



seemed to have forgotten their relatives 
with horrid unanimity. The next morn- 
ing, in order to avoid court-martial for 
favoritism, I had to part with more than 
fifty dollars in three-dollar chunks. 

We left Paris the next morning for the 
steamer at Havre. All afternoon I settled 
laundry bills. We had traveled fast and 
had had no chance to send out any wash- 
ing for two weeks. The laundry women 
of Paris got it all. They washed night 
and day and then they brought back the 
remains in drays and collected. By night 
I was extinct as far as money went, but I 
was tolerably happy. All liabilities had 
been discharged, the girls were reasonably 
satisfied, and nothing remained but to go 
on board ship the next day and sail for 
New York — a city which has one hundred 
banks with large bins and good telegraph 
communications with the Middle West. 

And then I remembered I didn't have a 
cent for steamer tips. 

i88 



THE FINISH 



That evening the red-headed boy from 
Omaha found me in an obscure corner of 
the hotel. I had about decided to stay in 
Paris and become an Apache. I told him 
so. We had become great friends on the 
trip, due principally to our disHke of the 
two Princeton and Harvard boys. He 
didn't like them because they were his 
implacable rivals for our beautiful Miss 

S , and I didn't like them because when 

I had confided to them that I, too, was a 
college graduate, and mentioned my dear 
old Mid-West alma mater, they had 
merrily asked me where the thing was lo- 
cated. So I had favored the red-headed 
boy all I could in his battles and confided 
in him now without hesitation. 

Too bad," he said sympathetically. 
But cheer up. Those stewards can't do 
any more than throw you in the bay. Gee, 
don't I wish I was in your place ! I'd give 
my shoes to go back on your ship. 
Between you and me " — he leaned over 

189 






THE TWENTY-FOUR 



and breathed this happily in my ear — "Tve 
got those two ribbon-hatted rah-rah boys 
backed clear off the map. We went to the 
opera tonight and she says I can go up to 
Havre tomorrow and see her off. Gosh, if 
I could only get over on the same boat I'd 
cinch things before we reached New York ! 
And there isn't standing room left on the 
boat. Tve been trying for three days to 
get my passage changed." 

Then a large door opened within my 
understanding and I peered into a blissful 
week of peace within my grasp. I thought 
furiously for a minute. " What will you 
give for my ticket?" I asked the red- 
headed boy. 

" Twenty-five dollars premium and a 
lifetime of gratitude," he said promptly. 

*' Will you promise to take care of those 
girls like a father, and see to their comfort 
and keep them happy, and swim to shore 
with them in case of wreck, and tip all the 
crew and the captain for me?" 

190 



THE FINISH 



" I'll die a-trying. Whoopee ! I can 
sell my passage right in this hotel. We'll 
settle things up this minute. Come and 
have a box of cigars. Are you going to 
stay over here? " 

" Not much," says I. " I'm going home 
in the steerage." 

I parted with the red-headed boy the 
next morning at the station. He was 

carrying Miss S 's suitcase, against 

the combined efforts of four porters, and 
he looked as if he never intended to set it 
down again. 

" Everything's fine," he said in the voice 
of a dazed but happy man. " The girls 
are perfectly satisfied. They've seemed to 
trust me ever since that ice-cream affair." 

" If Mrs. X objects to her stateroom 

you must promise her the pick of some- 
thing — any old thing," I reminded him. 

" Yes, I'll keep her happy." 

"And remember, Miss T 's deck 

chair must be as close as possible to the 

191 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



lifeboats, and you are to sleep with your 
clothes on in order to be ready for emer- 
gencies/' 

" I'll tell her I stand on the bridge at 
night with the captain." 

"And Miss O and the school- 
teachers must sit at separate tables." 

" Yes, yes." 

" And whatever you do, don't take any 

advice or information from Miss D ." 

Fll take it externally.^ 



Good. That's all, I think— except you 
must save enough money out to wireless 
to Cape Race. Good-by. They're herd- 
ing the animals ahead." 

" Good-by, old man. See you in New 
York. Maybe I can get you first-cabin 
deck privileges " 

'* Not if you love me," I said, and went 
happily away. 

The publisher was very glad to see me, 
two weeks later. He shook hands with 
me like a brother and an equal and took 

192 



THE FINISH 



me into his private office, where we 
smoked good cigars together. 

"Well, well, that was surely a great 
trip," he beamed. "You did very well. 
Got 'em all back? Nobody married?" 

" Not yet," said I. " Give 'em time, 
though." 

"And you got all the baggage home 
too. Fine ! But say, boy, you must think 
the newspaper business is a mint. What 
did you do with all the money? Travel 
on cloth of gold? " 

He was so good-natured that I didn't 
take the trouble to explain. 

" And so you're safely back after a fine 
vacation and ready to get into the old 
grind. It will seem very tame and mo- 
notonous for a while, I expect." 

" Very. Thank heaven ! " 

" What are you thanking heaven about? 
Boy, you have no gratitude. Here you've 
been away on a two months' vacation — 
nothing to do but loll around Europe 

193 



THE TWENTY-FOUR 



while we've been sweltering here in the 
heat. I wish I was a reporter and could 
run around the world on fancy assign- 
ments instead of slaving here to scrape up 
the money for the expense accounts. You 
boys have all the fun." 
" Yes, sir," said I. 



THE END 



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